A strange problem started to show up with certain Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 client computers using Direct Access for HQ connection. The client computer is trying to connect through the Direct Access tunnel and the error it shows when you click on the Direct Access connection name is “IPv6 is disabled. Contact your admin for help”. We have not made any changes to the clients IPv6 settings nor have changed any of the Group Policy Objects concerning Direct Access.
After some digging I found out that the IPv6 protocol on the client computer has been Disabled using the registry. You can check it by opening the registry editor and going to the hive:
“\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP6\Parameters”
There should be a DWORD key with the name DisabledComponents that has a value different from 0x00000000 (in my case the value of 0x0000008e was added).
All you have to do is either delete this key or set it to 0x00000000 and restart the computer.
After I set it to 0 and restarted the computer the Direct Access connection started working again.
Thanks for the article, it was spot-on on my problem…
did you findout why this happens ?
Thanks, my company’s tech support was not able to solve and you did. Thanks a lot
Same problem fixed. Thanks.
Thanks for the tip. Worked great here aswell!
Why do I always have to delete this registry. i remove it and when I restart again, it is back again, and must delete it again ?!
Chances are somebody disabled this is group policy: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5927.how-to-disable-ipv6-through-group-policy.aspx
Thank you very much!! I got this exact error message and my company computer support folks did not know how to fix it. Your simple and clear directions worked like a charm and saved my day.
Any idea what created the DisabledComponents DWORD? DirectAccess has been working fine for a while and all of the sudden we got a flood of calls from users saying they couldn’t connect. So far all of the client computers we’ve looked at had the DisabledComponents DWORD.
Thanks, fixed an issue I had the other day. Any idea WHAT would cause this?
It worked, thanks!
Thanks, worked for me.
Thenk you, this worked perfectly and helped me fix my connectivity issues