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Managing the "Launching Applications and Unsafe Files" Setting

Time: 00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source: Microsoft | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum

We are often asked about the centralized management of Internet Explorer configuration options for which there are no Group Policy settings included with the default IE GPO templates. One of the settings that we are asked about the most is the "Launching Applications and Unsafe Files" setting, since that setting is not defined in the IE Administrative Policy settings file (inetres.adm).

There are a number of different ways that you can manage this setting in an enterprise. The first is to use the Internet Explorer Maintenance Policies, which import from a source system's registry. The problem with this approach is that there is no granularity in what settings you are importing - it's an all or nothing solution, and you wind up deploying the entire collection of IE settings that are defined on the source system.