set home page in Internet Explorer

[sjj1805]

Question:
Is there some way by the registry where I can prevent my children from
continously changing our set home page in Internet Explorer.
They know that it can be done by dragging a page icon to the home button and
also by going to Internet Options
so I am hoping there is a way to prevent both methods from being used by some
registry edit because the registry
is one area they don't know about whatsoever. I am using IE 6 and Windows XP
Home edition.


Answer:
This is a frequently asked question and the answer is Yes.
Both methods of changing the Internet Explorer home page can be disabled with a
simple registry edit.

First, close all IE Windows.

Then click Start>Run and type regedit
Click OK and navigate to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

In the right hand pane, right click a blank area and choose New>DWORD value

Name it HomePage

Double click it and assign it a Value data of 1

Exit the registry and then test the result by opening IE and trying to change
your home page.
You should not be able to.
If you try to drag a page icon to the Home button, a circle with an X will
appear indicating the move isn't possible.
If you click Tools>Internet Options>General tab, you will see that the home
page entry and associated buttons to make changes
are greyed out,

Notes:

To re-enable the ability to change your home page, just change the registry
value from 1 to 0.

If all the keys are not present under the Policies key you can create them.
For example if all you have is
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\
you would right click the Polices key and choose New Key and name it Microsoft
Then under Microsoft, you would create another key
named Internet Explorer and then under Internet Explorer
you would create a third key named Control Panel so that if you copied the key
name you wouild end up with:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel


The location of the home page entry in the registry is at this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

The string value Start Page in the right hand side contains the url of your
home page
This is handy to know in the event that your home page is changed through the
registry.
If that were to happen while you have the changing of your home page disabled,
the new url
entered would take over and it would then become that page that you cannot
change in the normal way.