IPv6 - can I disble it?

[Rojo Habe]

When I logged on this evening an event balloon popped up telling me some
service had failed to start and that Limited Users would not be able to log
on. It vanished before I could make a note of it so I tried looking for it
in the Event Viewer. I haven't found that message but I've noticed some
things that concern me slightly:

At 3AM this morning my computer awoke from Sleep mode for two hours. I
hadn't even known this was possible without my intervention unless I had
Wake on LAN enabled (or Wake on Ring/USB/ etc. The only wake event I'm
aware of having configured is Wake on Keyboard). During this time, Windows
Update ran and the system time was updated so maybe this is normal.

What concerns me more is that over the last two days I've had numerous
occurrences of the following:

Windows Firewall did not apply the following rule:

Rule Information:
ID: CoreNet-Teredo-In
Name: Core Networking - Teredo (UDP-In)

Error Information:
Reason: Local Port resolved to an empty set.

and

Windows Firewall was unable to notify the user that it blocked an
application from accepting incoming connections on the network.

Error Code: 2

The actual firewall rule varies but the Error Information is always the
same. They all seem to relate to IPv6 packets, something my NAT router
offers me no protection against.


Two questions then. Firstly, given that these events have only appeared
over the last couple of days, is it possible I've picked up something nasty?
I'm running full system scans in both AVG and Ad-Aware at the moment but so
far they've found nothing beyond the usual tracking cookies.

Secondly, I'm not aware of owning any applications that even USE IPv6. Do I
really need it and is it possible to disable it?

OK, three things. I've always assumed that Windows Firewall/Defender
coupled with a NAT router would be adequate. If the Windows firewall is not
blocking these events, should I buy a better firewall? Specific
recommendations are always welcome! I got rid of Norton Internet Security a
long time ago (when I still had XP, which AFIK is not IPv6-aware) because it
caused insurmountable problems trying to network my laptop with my desktop
machine. Maybe it's time to bring it back and try a little harder...

....Or am I worrying unduly about nothing, and should I keep my nose out of
the Event Viewer in future?

 

[Mick Murphy]

TCP/IPv6 is to increase the number of availale IP addresses in the world.
TCP/IPv4 is only 32bit and has about 2.4 billion addresses

TCP/IPv6 is 128bit and multiplies the number of available address as cars
refrigerators,, iPods, etc all have their own IP addresses.

If you were having internet connection probs, one of the things to try is
unbinding TCP/IPv6.(which is going into network connection>right
clcik>properties>untick it.

But you are not having any probs with it.

Windows Update is set by default to get updates at 3.00AM as a scheduled task

 

[Rojo Habe]

Thanks for confirming the 3 AM thing. that's what I suspected and I should
have guessed that one of the differences between Sleep and Hibernate is that
Windows CAN wake itself from Sleep.

I know what IPv6 is about. I'm also aware that if your router isn't
v6-aware it can tunnel straight through (that's what Teredo does). My main
concern was that the Windows Firewall was failing to execute its own rules
and then failing to inform me. This still concerns me but since they're all
IPv6-related and I now know how to disable it (thanks for that too - feeling
a bit stupid that I didn't look there) I'll do that in the absence of any
advice to the contrary. My virus and malware scans all came up clean so
I'll try not to worry about it.

Since you've not mentioned anything to the contrary, may I infer that a NAT
router and Windows Firewall are indeed up to the job?

 

[Mick Murphy]

We are all just users here; not paid microsoft experts!!

Re TCP/IPv6, a few ISPs in my country, Australia, tell their customers to
turn IPv6 OFF when they ring up complaining that they can't get an internet
connection!
That says it all!

I use a NetGear Router, Vista Firewall(as it knows what to allow and what
not to)
Avast Anti-virus(there is a Free 4 Home version which is great), Spybot
Search & Destroy for spyware remover.
I disabled Defender; it caused a lot of slow down probs when customers used
to put it on their XP computers. Nothing has changed with it!

Good luck!

 

[Rojo Habe]

We are all just users here; not paid microsoft experts!!

I wasn't suggesting otherwise.

I've just re-read my second post in an attempt to find something that would
elicit such a response, and I'm at a loss to find anything. I'm sorry if
anything I said caused offence: none was intended. People post here hoping
for for advice from people with more experience and knowledge than
themselves. That's all I was doing.

In the absence of any indications to the contrary, I'm going to assume
there's nothing wrong, even though Windows Update is now repeatedly failing
to update my Windows Mail spam filter. Coupled with the aforemenioned
issues I'm getting a little suspicious, despite AVG and Ad-Aware giving me a
clean bill of health.

 

[Mick Murphy]

No offence taken. I was having a joke with you!
The only way we get solutions is by ourselves!
At least they provide the Server!

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Above is the AV Avast link.

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

And the Spybot search & destroy 1.5.2 link.
At leasy give the anti-spyware one a run; just to ease your mind.

You can run more than 1 anti-spyware program on your computer; but only 1
anti-virus.

 

[Rojo Habe]

Thanks. I used to have Spybot under XP, but never got round to installing
it in Vista (somebody on another forum once warned against it). I'll give
it another go.

I'm looking on microsoft.public.windowsupdate about the spam filter failing
to update, but so far no joy. It even fails if I download it and run it
manually.