Peter Hinchley

You can easily query and set the web proxy address used by Internet Explorer from the command line in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with netsh.

To query the current proxy setting, use the following command:

netsh winhttp show proxy

If you had a proxy address of proxy:80, you would see the following:

Current WinHTTP proxy settings:
Proxy Server(s) :  proxy:80
Bypass List     :  (none)

To set or update the proxy address to webproxy:80, use the following command:

netsh winhttp set proxy webproxy:80

You can also add entries to the proxy exclusion list. The following command will ensure the web sites named intranet and extranet are not accessed through the proxy:

netsh winhttp set proxy webproxy:80 "intranet;extranet"