danny’s space

Taking a laptop to and from work can be useful (it’s good exercise lugging a 3kg beast on your back) but changing the proxy server settings twice a day can quickly become an annoyance.

If your workplace uses an automatic proxy configuration script, you can create two .reg files to set and unset this for you.

For example, to set up the proxy configuration, have the following inside a file, e.g. proxyON.reg:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“AutoConfigURL”=”http://www.company.com/proxy.pac”

Obviously you need to replace the URL with one appropriate for your circumstances. To unset the automatic proxy, have the following inside another file, e.g. proxyOFF.reg:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“AutoConfigURL”=-

To ‘use’ the .reg files, just double click them. Tested and works fine with XP and Vista. Not sure where I found this tweak so I can’t reference it unfortunately.

For Firefox, I use the QuickProxy add-on. It’s much leaner than the FoxyProxy tool, which refused to save proxy settings for me.