Windows 10: Stop WPAD in Windows 11.

Hello,I am asking for help on how to stop my laptop from sending wpad dns requests. I have a pihole on my network, and the log is littered with wpad requests.I tried the first couple of techniques in this tutorial but no luck. How to disable Web Proxy Auto-Discovery WPAD in Windows 11/10 thewindowsclub.com I disabled netbios and lmhosts in the network adapter. Edited the hosts file per the instructions. Still my dns logs filled with wpad requests. I couldn't figure out how to edit the registry and don't want to totally mess up my laptop.Stopping the requests is beyond my technical ability

:)

 

Is it possible to get WPAD working in Windows 11?

Hello,

I have had a support ticket open with Microsoft engineers for over 3 months now and no one seems able to assist me.

I have a pfsense device setup and it is also acting the WPAD supplier for a squid proxy it hosts.

I have WPAD set up by both DNS resolving wpad and wpad.mydomain.com and I also have DHCP option 252 set sending "http://wpad.mydomain.com/wpad.dat" in the DHCP options.

Now this is the interesting thing, if I set the proxy settings to automatic in Windows 11, I would assume it would use the WPAD file right? Well that only seems to be half right.

Edge and other browsers like firefox do indeed use the WPAD file and set the proxy correctly.

However I noticed the Xbox App wouldn't sign in and some other errors and after looking I can see that the WinHTTP service is stating that it is directly connected (not using a proxy).

The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service is running, and so I thought the whole purpose of that service is to look for WPAD and set up WinHTTP with a proxy based on the wpad.dat file? It seems this is not occuring.

The wpad.dat, proxy.pac and wpad.da files are available via http://wpad/fileneme.ext and http://wpad.mydomain.com/fileneme.ext so there is nothing prohibiting the service from getting the wpad file, it just isn't and/or not setting the proxy for WinHTTP.

The only way I can get the PC to function properly is if I manually set the proxy and then run netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie so that it forces WinHTTP to use the proxy specified in the system settings.

The engineers that Microsoft have sent me to fix the issue don't seem to understand much about networking, I have had to explain basic concepts to them such as how a 404 error because favicon.ico does not exist is not a system error......

Is there anyone that can help? Because Microsoft can't .

 

wpad issues

I have an odd issue that i am unable to track down sort out. Have put this under windows instead of IE11 because it seams to stem from windows internet options.

In our business we have a very long proxy.pac file because there are internal domains that are only reachable via specific proxies they are not publicly resolvable. One of these sites is old and runs on aspx so requires IE (we are migrating it along eventually)

Across multiple devices Edge(chromium) or chrome the wpad lookup works correctly and the site opens, unfortunately it doesn't function correctly (aspx)

However on some devices when opening in IE11 it works fine.

On another subset we get DNS not found, as thou it is totally skipping the wpad process.

Another interesting side effect on these hosts that don't work if we try to open URLs in edge that are not FQDN ie http://internalsite (which is also http://internalsite.internaldomain)

We get

No authority could be contacted for authentication

unless we go to local intranet zone and check Automatically detect intranet network (on the other set of devices that IE11 works fine this doesn't need to be checked)

We are awkwardly in a split domain network (in transition) so these sites would normally use NT login (sharepoint) however these devices are no longer part of that domain so we have to authenticate domain1\username when the login pops up.

We have tried disabling AutoproxyResult cache (How to disable automatic proxy caching in Internet Explorer)

wpad override (K12USA Support Knowledge Base)

The wpad key is empty otherwise not showing a cached entry that i can see.

Now if i manually set the proxy statically ie http://wpad/wpad.dat it works fine, but this obviously breaks the host when we move backwards and forward between on VPN and off VPN.

Have checked the dev console (F12) however this doesn't show the pre GET/CONNECT process.

I'm also in a situation that currently devices are at home, so wireshark to check what dns lookups occur for wpad are encrypted out the interface so no idea if the lookup fails, but given nslookup from cmdline wpad resolves, wpad.internaldomain resolves
and http://wpad/wpad.dat works i'm a bit lsot.

It's like something has told it to skip the wpad process in IE11 but works fine in edge, or something wrong with resolution of internaldomain stuff.

This is on different identical hardware and fresh installs, we have only been on this platform for a few weeks overall so devices are very fresh.

 

Internet Explorer 11; Windows 10....Stopped Working

IE11; Windows 10. For the past 2 weeks when I open IE11 I get Internet Explorer has Stopped working POPUP message rendering IE 11 unusable.

I have followed suggested Fixes by "Resetting" IE11; Use Software Rendering...is NOT checked. I have tried to use "System Restore" and go back to a Restore Point prior to 2 weeks but, I get unable to restore to xx/xx/xxxx because the process cannot file iexplorer.exe.

I have tried several Restore Points...get this same result.

I cannot fine the Internet 11 Install Update to delete it as it is not in the list History\Installed Updates.

Surely there must be away to fix IE 11...I have run out of things to do...suggestions with steps will be appreciated.