Group Policy & Administrative Templates - HELP 1

[BDAMartinez]

I'm trying to do two things via Group Policies.

1) Modify the string value "Start Page" in the following key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main" and set it to a page of my choosing.

2) Add the DWORD "Completed" to the following key:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard" and set its binary value to 01.

I've been experimenting with Administrative Templates, but have been coming up short. Here's what I'm using for the start page:


CLASS MACHINE
CATEGORY "IE Default Start Page"
KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page\"
POLICY "Intranet Home Page"
KEYNAME "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\Main\Start Page"
VALUENAME "

http://intranet.ABC123xyz.com"

EXPLAIN "Set default IE start page to

http://intranet.ABC123xyz.com"

END POLICY
END CATEGORY


It's not working.

And for my second task I can't figure out how to even set a DWORD value at all from an ADM template. Could someone please provide me with the proper syntax to make these work, or at least point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.
-BDA

 

[mwiner]

don't try to reinvent the wheel.

in group policies look for the policy:

User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\

There is a policy in there called "Disable Internet Connection Wizard" just enable that.

also check out

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=274846

for your first issue

-Matt

 

[BDAMartinez]

Thanks so much for your help Matt.
A large portion of our staff are only employed here for a year or 2... and the majority are extremely tech-impaired. We restrict users from accessing just about every configuration setting (their account priveleges are VERY limited)... the less they can do, the less they can mess up, and the less time we have to spend fixing their mistakes or walking them through setup. We used to have the Wizard enabled, but disabling it saves us lots of time & energy. I'm not sure why, but this week we started getting the error message that new users couldn't run the wizard (it's disabled). We've had it disabled for over a year, and hadn't experienced any problems until recently. A quick registry modification "Complete" ends the error message... but doing this for every new user account we create is just not efficient. That's why I was hoping to find the syntax for an ADM template to fix this.
So, any help reinventing our wheel will be much appreciated.
I appreciate the link you gave me... Thanks again.
-BDA

 

[bcastner]

Open notepad and copy/paste the below as complete.reg :

***** start copy/paste below this line
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard]
"Completed"=dword:00000001

****** end copy/paste above this line

Place a line in your logon script:

regedit /s completed.reg

 

[BDAMartinez]

Great idea.
Thank you bcastner.

 

[bcastner]

Similarly, and edit as appropriate:

***** start copy/paste below this line
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Start Page"="http:\\

http://www.google.com"

****** end copy/paste above this line

 

[bcastner]

As to using Group Policy to push registry changes, see:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...er2003/technologies/management/gp/admtgp.mspx

You are missing alot of syntactical elements in your example above.