Internet Explorer 11, server 2008 and the new proxy

[Patrick]

Ok having a bit of a disaster today. County council gave us the proxy address for the light speed filter system. Our server is running 2008 r2 sp1 and our client machines are running a mixture of IE 10 and 11 thanks to auto upgrade mistake.

To push the new proxy out to the IE10 clients we modified the XML version support IE8 in GPO.

 

This worked and IE 10 saw the new proxy. However, the XML modifications only seem to work on IE 10 and the clients that have now got IE11 are now using the old proxy now that policy no longer applies. This proxy has been switched off so now these clients have no internet connection.

 

Anyone any ideas how I can get these back online without putting the proxy in manually, which could take days?

[zag]

Yes use the registry hack to push the proxy out site wide for all Internet Explorer versions site wide.

[LeMarchand]

I've been using a registry merge, which seems to work across all versions of IE.

 

I set up the proxy on the GP server and in User>Preferences>Windows Settings>Registry ran the Registry Wizard to import the settings:

 

Hive HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Key path Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Value name AutoConfigURL

Value type REG_SZ

Value data http://whatever your proxy is

 

(or you could just create said item)

 

Just seen @zag beat me to it, but just in case you need more info...

[Patrick]

Well, I feel a bit silly. I looked at the version of IE 11 installed (11.0.xxx), then I went back to the XML file and added the max support version to be 11.5.xxx, then the IE 11 clients started getting the proxy etc. Anyone know of any adverse effects from this? Apart from reaching the max version supported again?

 

We plan to be on server 2012 after summer, and GPO supports it properly again? Thanks guys, I'm going to sae that reg edit just in case I need it! I have about 3 months experience as a network admin. Talk about thrown in the deep end. Haa.

[beancole]

Were moving to Server 2012 soon too IE has been a nightmare for a while. Chrome have released a GPO package, food for thought.

[3s-gtech]

Well, I feel a bit silly. I looked at the version of IE 11 installed (11.0.xxx), then I went back to the XML file and added the max support version to be 11.5.xxx, then the IE 11 clients started getting the proxy etc. Anyone know of any adverse effects from this? Apart from reaching the max version supported again?

 

We plan to be on server 2012 after summer, and GPO supports it properly again? Thanks guys, I'm going to sae that reg edit just in case I need it! I have about 3 months experience as a network admin. Talk about thrown in the deep end. Haa.

 

No adverse effects. You can set max version to 99.0.0.0 if you wish - the hope is that by the time IE 12 is out, you have upgraded your DCs to a newer version so that they can natively manage it again. No harm in the meantime though, and it may continue to work with IE 12.

[Patrick]

That's pretty reassuring. On a side note, how easy is it upgrading to 2012? I'm guessing its a simple OS like upgrade, but how does AD react to the upgrade?