Have you ever had an issue with that annoying IE welcome screen? I manage multiple lab environments at a school district. We use both IE and Firefox as our browsers. The issue is when students login to a lab computer and open IE for the first time on that computer; it will always come up with the welcome screen and then the phishing filter. This can be an annoyance especially when you redo a lab multiple times. Here are steps you can take to pre-configure IE so it will be the perfect setup for all user right into the image that is deployed. You will need to have two machines; one that can be any normal workstation to get the settings and the other for your base image.
The first step is to login with a user that has admin credentials. It is best if the user hasn't been on that computer before so the IE windows will pop up.
After you have gone through the IE setup process, close IE and then open a run window.
Type 'regedit' and press OK.
Warning! Changing the registry can cause damage to the operating system.
From there, expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Software --> Microsoft --> Internet Explorer --> and select 'Main'. Export that to a location that you will be able to access from your base image machine. Then right click on the exported file and select edit. You will have to change the location from
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
to
[HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
Then erase everything when it starting from [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Default Feeds]
If you know how the registry works you can also tweak or erase the other values to suit your needs.
You should get something that looks like this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"NoUpdateCheck"=dword:00000001
"NoJITSetup"=dword:00000001
"Disable Script Debugger"="yes"
"Anchor Underline"="yes"
"Cache_Update_Frequency"="Once_Per_Session"
"Display Inline Images"="yes"
"Do404Search"=hex:01,00,00,00
"Local Page"="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\blank.htm"
"Save_Session_History_On_Exit"="no"
"Show_FullURL"="no"
"Show_StatusBar"="yes"
"Show_ToolBar"="yes"
"Show_URLinStatusBar"="yes"
"Show_URLToolBar"="yes"
"Use_DlgBox_Colors"="yes"
"Search Page"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896"
"XMLHTTP"=dword:00000001
"UseClearType"="yes"
"AlwaysShowMenus"=dword:00000001
"Enable Browser Extensions"="yes"
"Play_Background_Sounds"="yes"
"Play_Animations"="yes"
"Start Page"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157"
"CompatibilityFlags"=dword:00000000
"FullScreen"="no"
"SearchMigrated"=dword:00000000
"Window_Placement"=hex:2c,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,\
ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ad,01,00,00,27,01,00,00,cd,04,00,00,7f,03,00,\
00
"NotifyDownloadComplete"="yes"
"Use FormSuggest"="no"
Now go to the machine for the base image and login as a local administrator.
To get to the default users registry, we will need to make sure we can see hidden files and folders. For that to happen, we will need to open an explorer window and select 'Tools' and choose 'Folder Options'. From there, choose the 'View' tab and then choose the Radio Button that shows 'hidden files and folders'.
Open the registry editor on the base image machine and select 'HKEY_USERS'. Click on 'File' and select 'Load Hive'. From there, go to C:\Document and Settings\Default User\ and then choose 'NTUSER.DAT'. When it asks for a Key Name choose 'DEFAULT'.
Default User is normally a hidden folder.
Now that the hive is loaded select 'File' and choose 'Import'. Select the edited file and hit ok.
All that is left is to go to 'HKEY_USER', highlight 'DEFAULT', go to 'File' and unload Hive.
You are now finished and either the default settings have been imported for all new users or you destroyed the default user's registry and no new users can be created. Create a new image and now when your labs are deployed no one will have to deal with "Welcome to IE" window.