Lock your IE HomePage - 06/02/04 04:12 AM
Well my mom brought her laptop over to my workplace for me to fix, turns out some nasty adware got installed on there. When I looked at the IE homepage it was greyed out so that it couldn't be edited. The only way to edit it would be to re-enable it, edit it, then lock it again (if you want to).
The thing that got to me is, her homepage was locked at "searchexe.com" which she didn't set (nor would she). I went and looked for instructions on the web and came up with this little trick of locking your IE homepage so that it can't be hijacked, even by you (unless you unlock it).
Quick Steps:
1. Open Regedit (start -> run -> regedit).
2. You'll need to update this in two locations.
Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel
In both of the locations you'll need to add:
"HomePage"=dword:00000001
Now, if you go and right click "internet explorer" and choose "properties" you'll see that you cannot edit (or change) your homepage. To re-enable that you'd change the dword above to: 00000000
The thing that got to me is, her homepage was locked at "searchexe.com" which she didn't set (nor would she). I went and looked for instructions on the web and came up with this little trick of locking your IE homepage so that it can't be hijacked, even by you (unless you unlock it).
Quick Steps:
1. Open Regedit (start -> run -> regedit).
2. You'll need to update this in two locations.
Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel
In both of the locations you'll need to add:
"HomePage"=dword:00000001
Now, if you go and right click "internet explorer" and choose "properties" you'll see that you cannot edit (or change) your homepage. To re-enable that you'd change the dword above to: 00000000