If you’ve used Group Policy Internet Explorer Maintenance (IEM) to configure your organisations Internet explorer settings and are looking to upgrade to IE10 or above you will find that the settings defined with IEM will no longer work. Not only that but if you try to modify the GPO from a machine running IE10 you will not be able to modify the GPO settings.
Settings configured with IEM are not automatically removed when you upgrade from IE9 -> IE10, however any changes made to the IEM GPO will not be reflected by the clients and any new users logging onto a machine with IE10 will not receive the IEM settings.
- If UserA is logged onto a Windows 7 machine running IE9 and the user updates to IE10. The settings from IEM will be retained- but not enforced by Group Policy.
- If UserB logs onto the same Windows 7 machine for the first time after IE10 has been installed, they will not receive any IEM settings.
- If you are deploying or using Windows 8 (which ships with IE10) no settings from IEM will apply, ever.
IEM has been dropped in favour Group Policy preference, Administrative Templates and the Internet Explorer Administration Kit 10 (IEAK 10). This post will run you through a couple of common settings you may need to migrate across. I will cover setting the home page and proxy settings.
Setting Home Page with Group Policy Preferences
Open the Group Policy Management Console and create a new GPO. Browse to User Configuration -> Preferences -> Control Panel Settings -> Internet Settings. Right click and choose New -> Internet Explorer 10.
Enter the URL of the Home page you wish to set, and select start with home page. Notice the red dots underlining the home page entry.
You must press F5 (F6 seems to work too), to confirm the entry. If you do not the setting will not be applied. Once you have done so, the entry turns green.
Setting a Proxy with Group Policy Preferences
Create or modify an existing Internet Settings policy as explained above, this time head over the connection tab -> Lan Settings.
Specify the proxy, again note the red dots showing that the setting have not been confirmed. Press F5 to confirm.
Takeaway
- Internet Explorer Maintenance will NOT apply to to Internet Explorer 10 or above
- You will not be able to modify existing IEM GPOs from machines with IE10 or above installed
- Press F5 to confirm entries made to Group Policy Preferences Internet Settings, basically- made sure you’re green!
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