I have my router setup with the pihole as the only DNS server.
I have also setup my windows 10 computer to use the pihole specifically as the DNS server (to test if it was an incorrect setting on the router).
The pihole log says it's enabled and that it occassionally piholes things but none of the test sites seem to have anything blocked.
I ran into a problem while installing where the pi shutdown unexpectedly but I was able to reconfigure after restarting and everything seems to be on.
My android phone doesn't have any ads blocked either.
Expected Behaviour:
Ads blocked, test sites function as expected.
Actual Behaviour:
Ads not blocked. Test sites showing ads, and stating the there is no ad blocking.
Alright, since no one else looked into this. I removed pi-hole and reinstalled. I had to manually remove the packages that were loaded as the uninstaller didn't work competely, it kept booting me out.
When attempting to reinstall, I ran into the problem that the pi had it's DNS servers wiped to localhost. With that fixed, I was able to reinstall without the issue of the pi rebooting mid installation. It is no successfully working. Still not sure what the problem was initially and why it couldn't be reconfigured by using repair or reconfigure. I'm also kind of annoyed that there are a lot of pages that say not to uninstall, just use to forums to fix, it'll be faster... as you can see from my question, I wasted at least a day which could have been saved if I had started out with an uninstall.
Finally, I want to point out that in order for Windows 10 to block ads, the ipv6 dns server settings must also be configured. Quick tutorials online did not state this but after doing the ipv4 settings it is straight forward to also configure the ipv6.