How to reverse settings applied by GPO

[edpatterson]

I created a GPO for Proxy settings in IE. The same GPO removes the Connections tab.

I 'thought' that if I removed the policy the setting would be reset to the default which is to say removed. This is not the case.

I need an exit strategy for if/when my proxy server(s) go down or become unavailable. Simply unlinking the policy and restarting the machine did not do it.

Thanks for any and all assistance.

Ed

[JerryC]

Ed,

In general, only the settings defined as "Fully Managed" in the Computer or User 'Administrative Templates' areas are fully reversible. In the GPP (Group Policy Preferences) section, you can specify reversible behaviors in the Preferences Editor (though you'll need to watch out if you are applying reversible User GPP settings to a Terminal Server Environment...there's an MS KB article on this).

Options: Create and apply a GPO that explicitly reverses the behavior. Then, once all the devices/users have all been targeted and updated, you can remove this GPO. (Watch out for the IE Admin 'kit' style settings 'User config - WIndows Settings - IE stuff as these controls may reset all the IE settings back to the MS Out of the box default settings and not 'your' original defined default settings).

[pago]

Fallback strategy when proxy server(s) goes down?
To overcome any GPO related issues I would in general only assign a DNS alias for the proxy (single server or NLB cluster or whatever).
If you face a downtime (planned or unplanned) just use DNS to point to your backup proxy server.
Thus you don't have to touch any client (provided that all clients have configured the DNS alias as proxy => e.g. via GPO).

Did that help?