HP defies group policy by resetting home page

Our business bought several new computers, all from HP, that we have to configure and install to the domain. We have a particular website we direct all users to when they log onto IE, according to group policy in active directory.

The computer, however, will load the HP website into the browser instead. Now this only happens until we manually configure the web site in "Tools > Internet Options." The fastest fix we've found has been to "Run > gpupdate /force" and then reboot the machine.

I've been on the phone with HP (who originally told me to delete the temp files) support, where it was pretty obvious the person I was speaking to had little clue why this was even an issue. (It's a small issue, but still enough to bother the CIO.) My CIO doesn't really know how HP is doing it - he suspects an edit in the registry, but we can't find one. Google's turning up zeroes for me, too.

The problem is, technically, fixed by running the forced group policy update. But my boss is stumped, and I don't know enough about active directory to even guess at what could override group policy.

Has anyone seen or heard of this? Or has an idea how it happened, so I can go hunt it down?

 

This was the only line in the HJT log that I could identify as belonging to HP.

[FONT= "Courier New"]R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://ie.redirect.hp.com/svs/rdr?TYPE=3&tp=iehome&locale=en_us&c=91&bd=all&pf=cmdt[/FONT]

I'm not sharp enough to tell... It's not a browser help object, like a toolbar, or some redirection program. HK... stands for H_KEY? It's a registry setting?

Going on that supposition, from what little I know about Active Directory, shouldn't that have been over-written (assuming it was a registry entry) when I joined the computer to the domain? The group policy writes to each computer's registry what the home page should be, I thought.

Does this entry make more sense to anyone else, as to why it would supercede a group policy?

 

This may be just what I was missing! I'll check and let you know.

 

Sad to say, it did not work.

I set the "disable home page" to active and chose the specific webpage we want. But when I've had users under that particular group policy log in, the home page is still set to the HP redirect.

At that point, I had to remove the "diable home page" option, so the home page could be configured by hand. And the page stays once it's configured there... but the point is that I shouldn't have to, when each machine has multiple users. <grumble>

They finally decided to escalate it to a level-2 issue, now. I might be able to get some better answers - unless someone here has more suggestions before I can get them on the phone.

 

What's the syntax for removing keys? I want to try my hand at filling out the rest of this file by *removing* the HP keys when I add my home page to the registry.

Right now, it's adding the values to the registry, but the home page doesn't seem to be changing. Unless I need to do something like log out/in again for it to start functioning...?

EDIT: I'll let you proof it before I go and dump it onto a computer. God knows I don't want to wipe a *brand new* computer, because of a tiny little reg edit.

EDIT 002: CODE, after a quick google

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
 "Default_Page_URL "= "http://ie.redirect.hp.com/svs/rdr?TYPE=3&tp=iehome&locale=en_us&c=91&bd=all&pf=cmdt "=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
 "Default_Page_URL "= "http://intranet "

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
 "Start Page "= "http://ie.redirect.hp.com/svs/rdr?TYPE=3&tp=iehome&locale=en_us&c=91&bd=all&pf=cmdt "=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
 "Start Page "= "http://intranet "

GAH!! After reviewing it, I think it should be "Start Page "=- and then add a second line that says "Start Page "= "http://intrantet " to remove and then add the value correctly?

 

Solution!!

We did solve the problem. It required taking the script I wrote and putting it in "user config > administrative templates > system > logon > run these programs at user logon," as a .reg file. And I still don't get why that works, but applying the fix by running the regedit on the local computer didn't.