Enabling/disabling IE's proxy via the registry

The registry entry which needs to be modified when you want to enable or disable the proxy for IE is

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections\DefaultConnectionSettings

Byte 9 has to be modified such that if you wanted to enable it, bit 2 has to be set. Alternatively, if you wanted the proxy to be disabled, bit 2 has to be cleared.

Example 1

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections]

"DefaultConnectionSettings"=hex:46,00,00,00,a8,1e,00,00,03,00,00,00,6e,....

In the example above, bit 2 of byte 9 is set. This means that the proxy is enabled.

Example 2

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections]

"DefaultConnectionSettings"=hex:46,00,00,00,a8,1e,00,00,01,00,00,00,6e,....

In the example above, bit 2 of byte 9 is cleared. This means that the proxy is disabled.

Removing the default proxy setting for RedHat's "yum"

If you had set up the yum wizard to use an http proxy, these settings/environment variables are placed in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date.

So, if you decide to remove/stop using this default proxy, you would need to modify the above file by setting the following variables to the respective values:

enableProxy=0 <- set this value to 0 (zero)
httpProxy= <- remove the proxy string
proxyUser= <- remove the username string
proxyPassword= <- remove the password string