Internet Explorer 7 Advanced Proxy Settings via Group Policy

Something that has been on my task list for the last 4 months, and pissing me off royally the entire time, has been to figure out why Group Policy settings for Proxy Settings have not been applying to Internet Explorer 7 clients. The policy has worked fine in Internet Explorer 6 but after upgrading to Internet Explorer 7, the function ceased to work.
Apparently, this has been an issue for a lot of users:

SOLUTION!
While some users had luck after checking Proxy Exceptions to
make sure no invalid characters were included, many were still faced with the
initial problem.
After months of looking for a solution to this problem, the big M$ decided to FINALLY address the issue with a knowledge base article
(which was only posted THIS WEEK on March 10, 2009).

According to Microsoft, the issue is related to Internet Explorer 7 no longer
supporting the Gopher protocol. As a result, if you customize a GPO to include
Internet Explorer Proxy Settings, you MUST NOT INCLUDE GOPHER. Simply leave the
field blank, close the GPO and refresh the settings on the client computer. Like
MAGIC the settings now appear! Woohoo. Check below for a short guide.

Guide:

  1. Open the Group Policy Management Console and navigate to the GPO holding
    the settings.
  2. Navigate to the Proxy Configuration Settings located at User
    Configuration/Windows Settings/Internet Explorer Maintenance/Connection

    and configure the Proxy Settings field.

    Group Policy Configuration
  3. In this example, every field is set to the same server and port.
    Do not use the option
    "Use the same proxy server for all addresses."

    Original Proxy Settings
  4. Simply delete the entries on the Gopher Field, click
    Apply and then Ok.

    Adjusted Proxy Settings
  5. From the Client machine, open a command prompt and run
    "gpupdate /force".

    gpupdate
  6. Check your IE settings. The proxy configuration should now be applied!

Let me know if this works for you!

18 thoughts on “Internet Explorer 7 Advanced Proxy Settings via Group Policy”

  1. I have removed the Gopher Address and Port in the GPO and have verified at client application of GPO through RSOP. But, still it does not work for me. The exceptions URL does not contain any special characters. Kindly, suggest.

  2. I have a scenario that might be interesting. Can anyone solve this?

    We have a proxy server that connects all the PC’s to the internet. We have a main website (ex. http://www.domainname.com) that we need to access through the proxy server. But we also have several local website with the same domain name (ex. aaa.domainname.com, bbb.domainname.com, ccc.domainname.com, ddd.domainname.com and many more) that we need the proxy server to bypass.

    Question:
    How can I tell my proxy server to bypass (*.domainname.com) all our domain website except for 1 (www.domainname.com)?

  3. I tried the same settings but did not succeed is there any thing else I have to check I have been struggling for the same since last 15 days please help

  4. WE have all IE 6 7 and 8
    I have tried all the options in your blog.
    als I have tried this document which i came across while googling.
    “how to troubleshoot Internet Explorer Maintenance Policies”

    When I run gpupdate and RSOP I can see its working where as when I check the IE proxy settings the proxy options are grayed and nothing is implemented.
    Another strange thing what I saw was according to above document registry settings should change the INTERNET Explorer setting in Client machine should change which is stuck to old.

    Awaiting your feedback.
    Regards
    Sandy

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