Windows 10 IPv6 Not Working (with Fix)

Published October 3, 2022 by Geoff Mottram

Contact: geoff at minaret dot biz

Keywords: Windows 10, ipv6

Does your copy of Windows 10 absolutely refuse to enable IPv6 despite having tried every solution on the Internet? I followed all of those instructions for turning things off and on, and resetting this and that, and rebooting my machine after each modification. Nothing worked.

If you are ready to throw your Windows computer out the window, here is the solution that worked for me: check the registry for the following key using regedit:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters

The value of "DisabledComponents" should be set to 0x00 (that's hex zero) to enable ipv6. The value of 0xff is the correct value for disabling IPv6 and mine was set to 0xfffffff. I have no idea when this was done or by what program but it prevented IPv6 from running despite any values checked in the network properties boxes.

I changed my value to zero, rebooted, and miraculously, I now have IPv6 enabled and working.

Windows will not diagnose this problem if you run their "troubleshooter". As a result, there is no way of knowing that this arcane registry setting even exists.

For more information about this registry entry, see the following Microsoft article:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/networking/configure-ipv6-in-windows

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