Cannot change homepage GPO

[stickman]

Greetings

 

I hope someone can help me with this issue. I am trying to set a new IE homepage through group policy and I'm failing miserably.

 

I have a GPP which contains the desired homepage and settings, it is applied to the necessary OU in AD. Despite this policy being in place and being successfully applied as demonstrated by Group Policy Modelling the homepage on clients stubbornly clings to an old setting. Many moons ago, IEAK was used to set some settings for previous IE installs, I'm wondering if this is causing issues, the current Windows 7 image is a descendant of the image which was configured with IEAK.

 

The correct solution is to create a new image, which I'm working on but I need to change the homepage in the meantime.

 

When a user is logged on to a client which is affected, I can see that the old homepage is set in the registry at the following keys:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Default_Page_URL

 

I've created a policy to overwrite the keys above but it doesn't seem to have any effect despite applying successfully. My guess (clutching at straws) is that there's something else, lingering in the unknown which is taking precedence, but what? I can't find any other reg keys which might be to blame and I can't find anything to indicate it is group policy.

 

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

 

TIA

[Cazale]

A bit of date, but maybe this is relevant? https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2029043

 

If so, you could try (maybe on just one machine at first) pushing out a new IEAK without any settings applied and then apply them all through policies.

 

Also, are you sure you're using the correct set of administrative templates? IE11 is available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=40905

 

What are the client and server OS and IE versions? A real crappy bug affects Server 2008 R2 if you upgrade to IE11 on the server (all the IE policies disappear from view in policy manager, but are still applied across the domain!).

[stickman]

A bit of date, but maybe this is relevant? https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2029043

 

If so, you could try (maybe on just one machine at first) pushing out a new IEAK without any settings applied and then apply them all through policies.

 

Also, are you sure you're using the correct set of administrative templates? IE11 is available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=40905

 

What are the client and server OS and IE versions? A real crappy bug affects Server 2008 R2 if you upgrade to IE11 on the server (all the IE policies disappear from view in policy manager, but are still applied across the domain!).

 

You hero!

 

I. Could. Kiss. You.

 

Within your first link is some info which pointed me at a file which was holding in the config info which was a hangover from IEAK. I made a GPO to delete the file and voila!

 

Thank you!

[Cazale]

You are most welcome. Glad you got it sorted