A. In the previous FAQ, I told you how to use Group Policy to disable the IE configuration tabs. You can also edit the registry to disable these tabs by performing the following steps:
- Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
- Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft registry subkey.
- If the Internet Explorer subkey doesn't exist, create it (from the Edit menu, select New, Key and type "Internet Explorer" without the quotes) and navigate to that subkey.
- Under the Internet Explorer subkey, create a subkey called Control Panel, then navigate to that subkey.
- From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value, and create the first value (i.e., GeneralTab) from the table below. Press Enter.
- Double-click the created value, set it to 1 to disable the specified tab, then Click OK.
- Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each value in the table below.
- Close the registry editor.
The changes take effect immediately. To reenable the tab, set the registry value to 0 or delete the value.
| DWORD Value to Create |
Tab Disabled |
| GeneralTab |
General |
| SecurityTab |
Security |
| ContentTab |
Content |
| ConnectionsTab |
Connections |
| ProgramsTab |
Programs |
| PrivacyTab |
Privacy |
| AdvancedTab |
Advanced |
The figure below shows a sample configuration.
Click here to view image
In the figure, the Security and Advanced tabs have been removed but the Connections tab is still visible because its value is set to 0 in the registry. The remaining four tabs are all visible by default because they're not affected by the configuration that the figure shows.