Windows – GPOs – Removing IE Maintenance Settings with Windows 2012 R2

Here’s a tip to remove the “infamous” IE Maintenance gpo settings if you don’t have any way to get your hands on a Windows XP machine or simply wanna do it the “geek way” using Windows 2012 R2.

Follow these steps:

1. Open GPMC
2. Select your GPO
3. Now, on the right-side pane select Details tab
4. Copy, or take note, of the Unique ID
5. Close GPMC
6. Open Active Directory Users and Computers console
7. Make sure Advanced Features is turned on (View > Advanced Features)
8. Navigate to System | Polices
9. On the right-side pane, find the Unique ID you took note
10. Right-click on it and select Properties
11. Now, select Attribute Editor tab and scroll-down to gPCUserExtensionNames attribute and click Edit
12. In the dialog box find the following string and delete it (for proper editing copy/paste the entire string from the dialog box to notepad, delete what you need and copy/paste again to the dialog box)
    [{A2E30F80-D7DE-11D2-BBDE-00C04F86AE3B}{FC715823-C5FB-11D1-9EEF-00A0C90347FF}]
13. Click OK and…you’re done!