How To Properly Disable IPv6 in Windows 7

Microsoft includes native support for IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) and is enabled by default since in Windows Vista and Server 2008, and is enabled by default in Windows 7 too. IPv6 is the new computer address protocol that will eventually replace IPv4 which is currently the most popular standard. Unless you network has a specific requirement for IPv6, very few do, you can safely disable IPv6. Unlike other protocols, you cannot disable IPv6 by disabling the protocol on each of your network interfaces. While that will disable the protocol for the interfaces the loopback and tunnel interfaces will still have it enabled that can cause problems with applications. The proper way to disable IPv6 is to disable via the windows registry.

First, click on the Start Button ->> Go to Run and type in regedit and hit Enter. Then, navigate through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> services -> TCPIP6 -> Parameters. Right click on Parameters and select New and then DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the new value DisabledComponents and hit Enter. Now right click on the new DisabledComponents value you just created and select Modify. Set the value of DisabledComponents to FFFFFFFF and click OK.

After a reboot IPv6 will be disabled on all interfaces.

To check, open up a command prompt and run IPCONFIG and look to see if your card is still assigned a IPv6 address. If it is still getting a IPv6 address then check to make sure you did not make any mistakes entering the registry key.