Is this usually the case?

How can I get IE 8 in this setting?

Thanks,
Greg

I was worried that by using the in-built MS GPP provided IE7/8 property boxes above, more than just the desired Home Page setting could get applied (there are many settings pre-set in the IE preference interfaces)… how might these affect a users’ own current IE settings or those being applied from our GPOs? This was borne out when I went with this ‘full on’ GPP application method and found that, despite only having added a Home Page setting, once the GPP had applied, the Internet Options, Security, Intranet, Security Level for a desination user had changed from “Medium-High” to “Custom”.

So instead, in order to selectivly apply just our required corporate Home Page IE setting to all users, I created a Registry GPP which sets the “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page” key to the required URL – Ok… because this is a GPP, users can go change their home page after logon, but it will be re-set to the coroprate page the next time they logon. Doing it this way, all other existing IE settings remain as they were.

The advantage I see of using a GPP to do this over similar existing GPO template settings is that in addition to an ‘enforced’ corporate primary home page, GPPs do not prevent a user from also setting their own secondary home pages. The GPO method prevents this, locking down the GUI access to both primary and secondary home page changes (btw, if a roaming user already has any secondary home pages set, these still show up, but with no interface to allow them to add, remove or change them!).

David Pentland,
Edinburgh Napier University.