Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of HospiceChesapeake
HospiceChesapeakeFlag for United States of America

asked on

Users unable to change search provider in IE, why?

Not sure what triggered it or how long it's been an issue, but it appears users (even domain admins) have become unable to make certain changes to IE using Internet Options.

We discovered the problem when a user asked to change their search provider from Bing to Google. We receive an error stating we don't have permission to make that change.

As far as I know, we have no GPO in place specifically blocking search providers. We only have certain things such as the Title of IE.

Where would I begin to figure out what's going on here?

Thanks in advance.
Avatar of HospiceChesapeake
HospiceChesapeake
Flag of United States of America image

ASKER

Here's a screenshot - it may help to see what I'm talking about.
IE-Search-Provider-Error.png
Avatar of yarwell
yarwell

I've seen that type of error message when malware has infected a machine, may be worth a scan with Malwarebytes etc to be sure it's clean. Hijacking searches is one technique used by malware and they may seek to protect the hijack by preventing changes.
I've run Antivirus and Malware bytes, nothing found.

@jcimarron - we are running IE8 (in some cases IE9 only).
@jcimarron - I checked out the links, none were really of help. Thanks though. It appears theres some lingering Group Policy that could be causing the problem, but I'm unsure. I can't find anywhere in the GPO's that effect the users. All the standard IE GPO's are not defined so they shouldn't be messing things up.
HospiceChesapeake--For the IE9 PC's are you using the procedure here
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/tips/search-providers  ?

And look here http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-set-google-as-default-search-engine-in-internet-explorer-9/

Another idea--Run IE without add-ons.  Start|All Programs|Accessories|System Tools|Internet Explorer (no add-ons).
Here's the part you're missing... Users, including Domain Admins, cannot make any of these changes... see at the beginning of the post where I posted the image of the error. That's what's occurring. It's like a GPO or something else is overriding things.
HospiceChesapeake--No, I did not miss it.  I was hoping to find a way around it since you say you have investigated GPO's.  
However, a Reset of IE8 or IE9 might delete any GPO causing the problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737
See the section "Information about the Reset Internet Explorer Settings feature for network administrators"
The reset settings option is grayed out. So, there goes that idea.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of yarwell
yarwell

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Well, I can certainly tell you it's not in the GPO anywhere. So, what I'll try is your registry suggestion and see where that takes me.

I can tell you that once upon a time there was a GPO for IE, my thinking is that it was never cleared properly when it was removed and it's still lingering on these machines...

Will update you with the status. Thanks for the suggestion.
This did the trick.

I assume this only needs to be run once, so I'll setup a script that will run on all machines one time only.

Thanks so much yarwell (and everyone else for their support).