I've just about run out of ideas here on what may be causing this. I've toyed with policies quite often, but never ran into this problem before.
Windows 8 with IE11. While there are GPO's active on the system, the settings are kept free to alter by the user if need be. We use a proxy, so I'm required to provide the proxy and the exceptions in a policy to the PC's to make sure they work under normal
conditions. I added a couple of settings in the GPP (Group Policy Preferences) with the correct settings, enabled these settings (green lines) and tested these on a test system. They work fine, I get my proxy settings pushed through.
Then we get to the rollout on the systems that are affected (not that many, just 10 accounts total, all in nearby rooms). I can run a gpupdate /force to reload the settings, and can confirm the proxy settings are applied properly. So the policy itself seems
sound also on the workplaces it needs to be active on. Users still have the option to change the proxy settings on their own discretion, but that's exactly what we want to happen.
Now we run into the problem that when part of these PC's are rebooted, the PC somehow seems to decide the proxy isn't worth its time anymore, and kills all settings for the proxy back to default. Either that, or it just switches the proxy off. Running a
gpupdate /force reapplies the policy and everything starts working again, but WHY is Windows 8 / IE11 adament about forgetting these settings?
The really maddening thing is that on a couple of PC's with Windows 8 and IE11 (and the same policies applied) it isn't a problem and the proxy remains filled in, as I would expect from GPO's. These include my test system, which makes me unable to replicate
the problem and test locally.
I've tried enhancing the policy with using a forced wait for the network to become available) aswell as a forced logonscript run on boot instead the standard 'after 5 minutes'. Find these under 'Computer Configuration - Policy - Administrative Templates
- System - Logon' and 'Computer Configuration - Policy - Administrative Templates - System - Group Policy'. Neither setting seems to work tho. I've also tried going with a Computer Configuration Startup script in which I just request to run 'gpupdate' with
the '/force' as the switches. But this also seems not to do anything.
In short: Does anyone know why Windows 8 / IE11 falls back to something outside the scope of policies, while it accepts the forced policy update with the correct settings when 'gpupdate /force' is issued manually afterwards? And has anyone any idea what
I can do to make sure the policy is applied regardless of what Windows 8 / IE11 thinks it should be?