Disable/Forbid IE in Win2003 Workstation

[pepoluan]

All,

I want to prevent other users on my Windows 2003 Workstation to use IE and force them to use Firefox.

I had thought of writing a script that watches iexplore.exe being started and kills the process forcefully.

But is there a better, more elegant way?

{p}

[ColdFusion200]

perhaps replace the explorer executable with firefox executable?

[cluberti]

perhaps replace the explorer executable with firefox executable?

Doing that will break shell components, so not a good idea all around. However, you may be able to create a software restriction policy (either locally on the box or in the GPO that applies to the OU those machines are in) to disallow iexplore.exe.

[pepoluan]

perhaps replace the explorer executable with firefox executable?

Doing that will break shell components, so not a good idea all around. However, you may be able to create a software restriction policy (either locally on the box or in the GPO that applies to the OU those machines are in) to disallow iexplore.exe.

Wait, if I disallow iexplore.exe, wouldn't that also stop all other components from using iexplore.exe, thus breaking them?

[cluberti]

If anything calls iexplore.exe, then yes, it'll break them. You will lose some shell functionality too, for users affected by the policy (namely browsing from windows explorer), but you should test you users' workload on a machine with the policy enabled to see if your users can still function.

One other thing you could do is to lock down IE via group policy so no users can change settings, and point the proxy to a server on your network that simply serves up a "please use firefox page", with a link to the firefox executable on disk.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Here's a place that can help you with that:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=SF&s=&f=129

-or-

nLite:

http://nliteos.com

Those are the only ways to make sure that IE don't get used!

Edited December 12, 2006 by RJARRRPCGP

[Jeremy]

Security/User Permissions anyone?

[pepoluan]

Okay, so I use Group Policy / Software Restriction. Yes, trying to start IE now result in a security notification.

My question: Will this interfere with Windows Auto Update? IIRC Windows Auto Update requires some IE components.

[cluberti]

WU requires the .dll's, but not the .exe. If you've locked down only iexplore.exe, WU should still work.