As I blogged a few days back, Microsoft has deprecated (or removed) IE Maintenance Policy in Windows 8/Server 2012. And while I think this is a generally good thing, some folks may be wondering how they’re going to configure IE going forward. Well, Microsoft has published some preliminary documentation with guidance on how to get at certain functions that were provided in IE Maintenance policy.  Primarily, Microsoft is recommending GP Preferences Internet Settings to get most of the functionality that you now have in IE Maintenance, but note that I said most. The technical article I referenced shows those areas of IE Maintenance that are not covered by GP Preferences and what you can do if you need to configure them. Interestingly the answer seems to be, “use the IE Admin Kit” (IEAK), which generally speaking lives outside of Group Policy and it not usually deploying using GP. I’m not entirely clear how Microsoft expects folks to use the IEAK to make ongoing changes to IE configuration, but then again, maybe it’s not a big deal. In any case, hopefully you’re not using one of those features that is not covered by GP Preferences. At the end of the day, I do think it’s a good thing that IE Maintenance policy is going away, but I would like to see GP Preferences have the full fidelity of features before they yank IEM out. But then, I wasn’t consulted  🙂

Darren