Changing Extra Registry Settings

[jim_pinto]

I am unable to figure out how to change Extra Registry Settings with GP on a W2003 SP2 Server. As near as I can tell Group Policy was edited by someone using Vista and I don't have Vista.

The Group Policy interface shows me Extra Registry Settings that I can't figure out how to change. I can't seem to find the corresponding setting in any of the .adm or .pol files and I used a script to force the registry settings and Group Policy just changed this back to the defined Extra Registry Setting. I'm confused and must be overlooking information on how to make this change.

I can't change this Extra Registry Setting I see is under:

User Configuration - Administrative Templates - Extra Registry Settings

Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page

In Group Policy I have also set the "Home Page" I want under:
User Configuration - Windows Settings - Internet Explorer Maintenance - URLs - "Important URL's"

That setting seems to be over-ridden by the Extra Registry Setting for the "Start Page".

I'm no GPO expert so any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Jim

[JHGBaouns]

This setting is a not a managed Group Policy. To see Unmanaged settings you have to
- Browse down to Administrative Templates
- Right click - view - Filtering
- Uncheck "Show only settings that can be fully managed"

If you still cant see the setting that means that someone has done its own adm-file, or admx-file to manage it as a regular registry change.

You can always make your own adm to change/delete that setting. When you have deleted the settings you can delete the adm-file too.
You can use this tool to make the adm from a regfile:
http://yizhar.mvps.org/

Or you can use this code below, save it as MyOwnSettings.adm and copy it to C:\Windows\Inf. After you have done that you should see the settings under the hive Administrative templates\Own Settings.

*** Code begins under here ***

CLASS USER

CATEGORY "Own Settings"
KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main"

POLICY "Start Page"
PART "Start Page"
EDITTEXT
VALUENAME "Start Page"
END PART
END POLICY

END CATEGORY

*** Code ends over this ****

Regards
JHGBaouns
Jimmy Lind - Sweden

[jim_pinto]

Jimmy - Thanks for the information.

There were defined administrative templates so removing the filtering did not help.

I created the MyOwnSetting.adm file and tried that although I could not get that to work either.

Along the way I identified the exact location of the default domain policy .adm files and .pol file on the server and discovered the registry key setting in the Registry.pol file. I tried to manually update the Registry.pol file but that didn't work so I just deleted the Registry.pol file and went back into the Group Policy Manager and set the registry items I needed to have. This seems to have fixed the issue.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your response.
Jim