Trusted Sites in IE6. Head Aching issue!

[BerryAlan]

Dear All,

We have a webserver on our network as a front end to our ERP system. On a few PCs running XP SP3, we have suddenly encountered an issue in that when connecting to our ERP webserver, IE6 thinks it is in the Intranet Zone and not the Trusted Site Zone. GPO looks OK and applies without error to the PC. I have checked the registry, and in both HKCU and HKLM, the web server shows as being in zone 2 i.e Trusted Sites:

HKLM or HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ZoneMap\Domains

I have deleted the entries from the registry then done a GPUPDATE /FORCE. Again the server appears in the registry as Zone 2, but when I run IE and connect, the bottom right hand corner shows Intranet.

The only thing that I am aware of that changed on the PCs is the fact that Sophos AV was installed using Sophos Enterprise Console. This is driving me mad. I stop for my 2 weeks summer holiday on Friday 23 July and I would love to have this issue resolved by then.

Regards

Alan

[BerryAlan]

Sorry I should have added that if I try to add the webserver to the trusted site zone manually, I get an error message saying that it already exists in another zone.

[cluberti]

Is it just that site that is affected? If you add other sites to the trusted sites zone, do they also go to Intranet?

[BerryAlan]

I have just gone onto the PC and added www.bbc.co.uk to the Trusted Sites. It looked as if everything went k, but when I came out of IE and back in again, the trusted sites list is empty again. If I try to add www.bbc.co.uk again, it says "site already exist in another zone etc".

On checking the registry HKCU has bbc in it as a Zone 2, HKLM doesn't as you would expect.

Alan

[cluberti]

Are you setting these in group or local policy, or just manually entering them via a .reg import?

[BerryAlan]

Cluberti,

I manually added BBC as a test, but the web server is added through GPO.

[cluberti]

If you're using the site to zone assignment list, this would be expected behavior (the list looking empty, and getting an error when adding - not the zone issues themselves). If you need to add a list, and you want users to be able to edit them afterwards, you want to use an IE Maintenance policy in preference mode (or add the sites via a .reg or reg add commands on login). As to a site in one zone showing in another, there are ways to see what's happening. Send me a PM Monday morning if you haven't gone on vacation and I'll see if I can help you out with that - urlmon can be traced to see which zone, and why.