After rolling out the proxy settings within my network, there is another nice feature I stumbled upon: “Networks using Windows 2003 and/or 2008 Servers as a DNS do or can block wpad request by default.”

Nice if you do not use it - but kinda hard to find if you need it and don’t know it.

Windows 2008 is straight forward to configure and Microsofts KB is helping. Windows 2003 is a different story. I found Chris Dents homepage to address the issue because Microsofts KB ist nor very useful. I looked into the registry and surprisingly the so called global query block list was disabled (as the handbook says but why does it now work).

Nevertheless - without deleting the entries for wpad and restarting the DNS Server service the wpad URL wasn’t able to be resolved.

So be aware of that :)

Enabling or Disabling the Global Query Block List

  • Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters
  • Name: EnableGlobalQueryBlockList
  • Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
  • Data: Enable: 1; Disable: 0

The default is disabled.

Managing the Global Query Block List

  • Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\Parameters
  • Name: GlobalQueryBlockList
  • Type: REG_MULTI_SZ (Multi-String Value)
  • Data: wpad isatap