How to Disable Internet Explorer Startup Screen on First Login - Windows 2012 R2

Hi Friends,

When you first login to Internet Explorer you get a window that says, Setup Internet Explorer <<Version Number>>  Use recommended settings, or don't use recommended settings.  This might not seem like a big deal since you tell IE what you want, click OK and it doesn't bother you again.  That would be true if I were only logging into a single machine, but I'm testing Remote Desktop for VDI use cases and have boatloads of users logging in for the first time.

I turned to my buddy Google and sure enough there were lots of pages showing how to disable the window with either group policy settings or registry settings.  I don't know about you, but I get a little creeped out editing the registry.  I know I shouldn't, but it's like performing brain surgery and if I mess something up I don't want to kill the patient.  So it was off to group policy!

Since all of my users will be logging into the same machine, the easiest way seemed to be to edit the Local Group Policy with the Local Group Policy Editor. 

Here are the steps I found:

1.  In your run command thingy type:  gpedit.msc
2.  Go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer.
3.  Find Prevent performance of First Run Customize.
4.   Set the value to Enabled.
5.  Go directly to home page
6.  ......

Wait, wait, backup!  Step 2 works just fine, but there's no Prevent performance of First Run Customize here...  Did this change from 2008 to 2012?

I read that you can also go to Group Policy Management on your AD host and create a new GPO.  The only problem is my AD server is running 2008 R2 so when I created the GPO it didn't work on my 2012 R2 host.  Now this could be that I'm clueless when it comes to Active Directory or it could be that the GPO won't work on 2012 R2 because the setting doesn't exist...  Hmmmmmmm, what to do?

I did some searches, but couldn't find anything regarding this and Windows 2012 R2.

I can't imagine Microsoft got rid of the setting, maybe they just renamed it?

Looking around I found a setting named Prevent running First Run wizard.  Could that be it?



I opened it up and it looked like the old setting.  So I enabled it and set it to, Go directly to home page.



I than logged in as a new user and it worked!!  No First Run Wizard / Startup Screen!

So if you're running 2012 R2 and want to ditch the startup screen, this might help.

Until Next Time!
-Brain