philmorgan.net

In my work I look after software installation for a number of computer labs and one of the applications that I deploy is Mozilla Firefox. Some time ago I discovered the excellent FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition which is exactly the same as the Mozilla version except that it allows for the possibility of configuring many of the browser settings through Active Directory Group Policy.

If you haven’t seen FrontMotion Firefox before check it out here: http://www.frontmotion.com/FMFirefoxCE/index.htm

The associated ADM templates are available on this page and as you can see they don’t hang about in getting the latest versions packaged up ready for you to use: http://www.frontmotion.com/FMFirefoxCE/download_fmfirefoxce.htm

Disabling the first run Import Settings and Data Wizard:

Once deployed; one thing was bugging me. Whenever a user launches Firefox for the first time (and they do not have an existing Firefox profile they get the Import Wizard to Import Settings and Data… and once they’ve made it past that instead of the default homepage (which I set to our organisation’s web site) they get the Welcome to Version X.x firstrun tab.

Luckily there is a way to disable the Firefox Import Bookmarks and Settings Wizard that runs on first launch and if users do want to import their IE Favorites they can still do this once Firefox has launched from the main menu: File > Import

To disable the first run Import Wizard simply create a file named override.ini containing this text:

[XRE]
EnableProfileMigrator=false

Copy it into: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\
You could do this using a command script that runs on startup.

The bug is documented here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286557

Disabling the first run Welcome to Version X.x tab:

But wait! We don’t want that annoying Welcome to Version X.x page to appear either when the user launches Firefox for the first time. We just want our home page to appear.

So using the Mozilla ADM template that works with FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition you can disable this via group policy:

In the ADM under locked settings simply set:
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone to ignore

This bug is documented here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102313

Eh voila, user logs onto PC for the first time and starts Firefox, up comes the homepage!

What has happened to Web Messenger??? I use Live Messenger frequently but when it is not available to me – such as on a PC where I don’t have admininistrative rights to install it or when I am using a non-Microsoft operating system – Web Messenger was really useful. Now logging into Web Messenger dumps you to a page showing your entire contacts list.

There’s no way to sort the list to show who is online and available to chat. It’s also not clear what happens if you receive an incoming message. Where does it appear?? This is a huge downgrade in functionality from the previous Web Messenger.

When will Microsoft learn to innovate and to stop copying other products – e.g. Windows Live trying to be a social network but with very poor functionality – bing.com trying to take on Google by doing… the same things. Live Messenger is one of the few ‘products’ where Microsoft has continuously been ahead of the competition – and is keeping pace with comparable offerings from Yahoo and Skype. Keep that innovation going and give us back our Web Messenger!!

Thanks to feedback from those of you who’ve experienced problems with Windows XP BITS I’ve updated my script to include a more conprehesive registry fix. The new version attempts to restore the BITS related registry keys and registry permissions that are reportedly altered by some viruses. Hope this is useful for people – please let me know if it works for you!

Windows XP BITS Fix Version 1.6

I’m still getting mail about RD Enable from lots of people who have found it useful. Therefore, I’m now pleased to release a simple command line version – RD Enable CL. This version is much faster (as it’s written in C) and much smaller in filesize. It does almost the same thing, although the remote firewall exception feature is not available in this version. I know that RD Enable XP doesn’t work too well in Windows Vista, but hopefully this version does. Feed back is always welcome!