Redirecting Favorites using Group Policy

Windows Active Directory and group policy lets you easily redirect your users Desktop, My Documents folders, Start Menu and Application Data (although I would like to know why anyone would redirect the App data folder). But for some reason the users Favorites redirection was left out of these defaults.

I’m sure there are multiple ways to do this but the way I’ve accomplished this at many sites by doing the following:

Create a blank group policy and call it something like “favoritesredirection” and assign it to the user Organisational Unit you want redirection to occur.

Within your new policy navigate to  the User Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Scripts (Logon/Logoff) and double click on Logon from the right hand side.

Click on Show Files….

Now create the following files within this folder using something like notepad to do the editing as it doesn’t add any extra useless formatting:

A “favoritesredirection.bat” containing:

%systemroot%regedit /s favoritesredirection.reg

A “favoritesredirection.reg” file containing:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerUser Shell Folders]

“Favorites”=hex(2):25,00,48,00,4f,00,4d,00,45,00,44,00,52,00,49,00,56,00,45,00,
25,00,5c,00,46,00,61,00,76,00,6f,00,72,00,69,00,74,00,65,00,73,00,00,00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerShell Folders]
“Favorites”=”\servernameHomefolders%username%_favorites”

The directory should look like this: 

Back on the “Logon Properties” window click on Add.

Type in favoritesredirection.bat (or browse and select favoritesredirection.bat) and click on Ok -> Ok and close out of the group policy object editor.

How to Change your Internet Homepage on Internet Explorer 7

This one is a rather simple one to do, but you’d be surprised at how many people I see who have not changed their homepage from Ninemsn.

Click on Tools then Internet Options.

Type in website you want to change your homepage to and click on Ok at the bottom.

If you want to have multiple webpages open up when you start Internet Explorer you can place all the websites you want on its own line and they will open up in their own tab as shown below.