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We are deploying Windows 10 and are in the customization part of that process. The only problem left is the Edge default settings that will show the News feed as default for our users when they start Edge.
The settings regarding the news feed is stored in a protected registry value (ProtectedHomepages). If I export that value and deploy in on another user or a computer or the default profile, the Edge will reset itself to default settings.
“HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppContainer\Storage\microsoft.microsoftedge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\MicrosoftEdge\Protected - It is a violation of Windows Policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy”
ProtectedHomepages
So I did some monitoring with Wireshark to get all the URL that is requested when the Edge starts. The idea was to prevent Edge from contacting the servers hosting the news feed.
When I put all those URLs in the local hostfile pointing to an invalid IP-address, it instead started to communicate directly by IP-address. Impressive!
I then created an outbound firewall rule that blocked the IP-address it was communicating to.
Finally, I got what I wanted. A clean start page in Edge with only the search field.
Instead of doing this client modification we are looking at blocking the whole msn.com with subdomains in the central firewall. This will give the same result, a clean start page!
I don’t think Microsoft wants corporations to block msn.com to get rid of the News feed so I hope they will provide a way to configure the default start page settings in the future.
Have anyone else found a better solution to handle this problem?
More...
The settings regarding the news feed is stored in a protected registry value (ProtectedHomepages). If I export that value and deploy in on another user or a computer or the default profile, the Edge will reset itself to default settings.
“HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppContainer\Storage\microsoft.microsoftedge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\MicrosoftEdge\Protected - It is a violation of Windows Policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy”
ProtectedHomepages
So I did some monitoring with Wireshark to get all the URL that is requested when the Edge starts. The idea was to prevent Edge from contacting the servers hosting the news feed.
When I put all those URLs in the local hostfile pointing to an invalid IP-address, it instead started to communicate directly by IP-address. Impressive!
I then created an outbound firewall rule that blocked the IP-address it was communicating to.
Finally, I got what I wanted. A clean start page in Edge with only the search field.
Instead of doing this client modification we are looking at blocking the whole msn.com with subdomains in the central firewall. This will give the same result, a clean start page!
I don’t think Microsoft wants corporations to block msn.com to get rid of the News feed so I hope they will provide a way to configure the default start page settings in the future.
Have anyone else found a better solution to handle this problem?
More...