RE: [ActiveDir] Internet Explorer Home Page Question

[Craig Gauss]

I had to do something similar to this recently.  What we ended up doing was create a batch file to check for the existance of a file on a share, which we call from the logon script in the GPO.  If it existed it would skip past the registry edit, allowing the user to set whatever homepage they wanted.  If it didnt it sets the homepage and then writes a file to the share.

 

Batch file:

 

if exist \\server\userupdates\%username%%computername%.IEStartPage goto END
  regedit /s \\server\registry\ie\iestart.reg
  copy \\server\UserUpdates\template.txt \\server\userupdates\%username%%computername%.IEStartPage
  goto END
:END

 

Registry edit:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Start Page"="http://www.rhahealthcare.org/"
"Search Page"="http://www.google.com"

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kamlesh Parmar
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 12:11 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] Internet Explorer Home Page Question

Building on what James said,

You can make it automatic, create a group New-Users and assign the intranet homepage GPO to this group. and importantly, Allow members to remove themselves from group.

When you create a new user, just make her member of this group.

Make a login script, in the same GPO, which will remove the logged in user from this group.

When user logs in first, time, she is member of this New-Users group, so this GPO applies
and her homepage is set to intranet.
At the same time, login script runs and removes user from that group.
This makes sure that, this GPO is never applied again, as user no longer member of New-Users group. And intranet was set for first login only.

-
Kamlesh

On 11/18/05, Blair, James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Michael,

 

You could create a new user security group and a GPO for the homepage. Use security filtering so that group only gets the policy. Remove the new users from the group after x days.

 

James

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Brian Desmond
Sent: Friday, 18 November 2005 12:29 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] Internet Explorer Home Page Question

 

How about a logon script to take care of this? Check for a HKCU key/value. If it's not there, assume it's the first logon and set their homepage and then set the homepage.

 

Thanks,
Brian Desmond

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 

c - 312.731.3132

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Micheal S. Mand
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 6:37 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] Internet Explorer Home Page Question

 

Hello,

 

I just joined the list, so forgive me if this has been answered already.

 

I've been put to the task of using AD to set the home page of all NEW users to our company intranet, but not override the current user's settings. We want this to happen automatically because we are usually creating new users with little notice, and very little time to make the account active. I've searched and searched all over existence for something related to this, and so far have only come up with some hacks to permanently set every user's home page the same. We want users to be able to change this home page if they wish, without it resetting every time they log in to their machine. If they log into a new machine, we could also set the home page to the intranet, but this isn't as necessary.

 

Has anyone even heard of doing anything like this? Is it even possible?

 

Thanks in advance,

Micheal S. Mand
Network Administrator
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ara.com

 

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