All right.
In this module, we're going to explore the management of Internet Explorer configuration using group
policy.
So with IEEE, you would think Microsoft would be the best at configuring IEEE through group policy.
And unfortunately, that's not the case.
There's been a very mixed history around managing IAE configuration, using group policy.
So before Windows eight shipped, there were essentially three ways to manage IEEE settings or IEEE
configuration.
The first way was with good old administrative templates policy.
So every new version of IEEE would ship with new sets of admin template, ADMA X files and admin files
that provided settings control over features within group policy or within IEEE.
There was also, from the very beginning, an area called IEEE Maintenance Policy, and this was another
way of configuring sets of options within IEEE.
And I'll talk a little bit more about this in a bit.
But it was not necessarily a complete overlap with administrative templates.
It did more than what you could do through administrative templates.
And then finally, when GP preferences became part of the group policy universe, Microsoft added the
capability of configuring i.e. through group policy preferences, internet settings area.
So there were lots of different, sometimes conflicting ways to configure your IEEE settings, and users
were often not clear on which one should be used under which circumstances.
So what Microsoft did, interestingly, is removed one of the options, in other words, IEEE maintenance
policy was removed from Windows eight and any system that had IEEE ten or greater installed.
So we were left with those two ways admin templates and Internet Explorer or a group policy preferences
Internet settings as the two main ways to configure IEEE today.
So what happened to IEEE Maintenance Policy?
Well on systems running Windows eight and above or any system Windows seven, for example, with i.e.
ten or above installed.
The Internet main IEEE maintenance policy under user configuration went away.
It just disappeared.
No more processing of IEEE maintenance policy by users.
So in other words, if you are a user that had previously been running Windows seven with IEEE nine
and you upgraded to IEEE ten and have the Internet Explorer maintenance settings that you had previously
been getting would not be delivered to IEEE ten.
It simply stopped working.
No more editing of IEEE Maintenance Policy.
It just simple disappeared from the policy.
Ed If you were an administrator of these settings now reporting on existing settings would still work.
So you can still see IEEE Maintenance and settings within the PMC in existing GPOs.
You just couldn't edit them and you couldn't process them if you were a user in that was receiving these
settings.
Now it's not really all that bad in the bigger scheme of things, because IEEE Maintenance has had a
history of being super buggy.
There were problems with IEEE Maintenance almost from the beginning of its introduction.
So I wouldn't say that I'm heartbroken about IEEE Maintenance going away.
But it's definitely the way it was done.
I think his call a lot of users by surprise.
And so we'll talk about sort of how to go forward in this new world where we have these two remaining
areas.
And I think the biggest challenge that you're going to find is that you maintenance actually did some
pretty cool stuff from a configuration perspective.
And there is no 1 to 1 replacement in the remaining two policy areas for all of the stuff that IEEE
Maintenance did.
So you sort of have to resort to registry hacks and other methods to try to configure, i.e. if you
were using some of the more, let's say, advanced settings within IEEE Maintenance Policy.
So let's see how the remaining two ones fill the bill.
We've got admin templates settings.
Now, they don't cover all of the things you can do in IEEE from a configuration perspective.
Certainly not everything that IEEE maintenance did.
But the key kind of distinguishing factor about admin template settings for IEEE is that they prevent
the user from changing settings.
So with the user, if you configure admin template settings for the user's browser, they will not be
able to change those settings.
Now alternatively, GP preferences, what it brings to the table are more configuration options than
what you have in admin templates.
So a little bit closer match to what came an IEEE maintenance policy?
And it's sort of easy to use.
I'll show you this in a subsequent part of the module.
But it kind of mimics the IEEE interface.
Exactly.
So it's almost like you're an IEEE configuring IEEE, but it's really just GBE preferences.
And then the other thing that it doesn't do that admin templates does is enforce configuration.
So the user can actually change things that you specify in preferences, internet settings.
And that's a little bit different than what you might find an admin templates, which obviously the
whole goal of that is to lock down the interface user can't change it.
Okay.