Proxy Settings in Vista, Win7 onward (where's proxycfg.exe?)

Sometimes in Windows life you come across apps that are not smart enough to figure out how to connect to the web via a proxy. Yes most people don't use proxies, but for us developers who have to work within a Corporate firewall, proxy frustration is a frequent occurence.

(I specifically talk about this in a future post regarding installing Windows Live  Essentials from behind a proxy)

This is often a problem with Microsoft Installers for Service Packs and such. They mindlessly try and connect to the web and do not give you any explicit way of setting proxies. I always found this strange, considering Microsoft should understand corporate IT networking arrangements. Anyway - luckily there is a solution!

Prior to Vista, the way to get around this was to us the ProxyCfg.exe application (part of WinHTTP) to force all HTTP traffic on the computer to go through the proxy you specified.

This application was removed in Vista (and Windows 7) and replaced by netsh.

In short, you can mess with the proxy settings by doing this:

1. Open Command Prompt (Run->cmd)
2. To see current settings, type: netsh winhttp show proxy
3. To change the proxy: netsh winhttp set proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"

Two good blog posts with more information on netsh:

• What happened to proxycfg
• Proxycfg on Vista and Win 2008
• And here's some good books on proxies

Leave your questions/issues in the comments!

p.s. Remove your antivirus and PC firewall from the mix before trying the above. Sometimes programs like McAffee and Sophos silently block downloads. Kill them in the Task Manager and try your installer again.