It says that with every succeeding version of any software or program, its features and user controlled options get upgraded to a better dimension, contributing as a whole to the overall development of the software.
Internet Explorer 8 stands tall as a testimonial to this. Right from the start, when Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 1.0 in 1995, to the recent arrival of Internet Explorer 8 in 2009, the process of up-gradation has been a consistent act genuinely worthy of admiration. Salient features of IE8 includes a greater malware protection, an improved phishing filter, browsing options and speeds not witnessed before in any of its predecessors. No doubt, IE8 leads Mozilla, Safari, Chrome in stats that depict the various aspects of these browsers.
However, considering all these facilities that IE8 provide you with, its not completely protected from malwares and trojans that are created almost everyday. A trojan invasion may result in changing the Internet Explorer homepage and its settings. This may occur even if you have an antivirus program running on your system. Incurring this problem can only be prevented if you are careful enough not to visit websites of unknown sources or read emails from unverified sources. Other than these, there is no cure to the results of such a trojan attack.
As a prevention measure to this potential threat being incorporated to your system, we take to improvising on Windows 7 to an unforeseen level, so as to boost up the self-protection feature of Internet Explorer 8.
Improving Windows 7 :
The Windows Registry Editor proves once again to be a tool of use as it comes as an aid to develop the potential of Windows 7 in order to improve IE8’s self-protection feature.
[Tip : See how to re-enable Registry Editor when disabled by virus.]
1. Press “Windows+R” to open the “Run” box. Type “regedit” in the box and click “OK”. Confirm on request.
2. This opens up the Registry Editor. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoft
Right click on “Microsoft” and select “new” and then choose “key”.
3. A folder is created under “Microsoft”. Rename it to “Control Panel“.
4. Now double click on the newly created folder to open it. The location to the created folder is : HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftControl Panel. On the right hand pane of the Registry Editor, right click on an empty space and select “New” and then click “DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
5. A new file is created in the previously created folder “Control Panel”. Rename this file to “Settings”. Repeat step 4 twice more and rename the two created files as “Links” and “SecAddSites” respectively.
6. Now, right-click on the file “Settings” and select to “Modify”.
7. Set the value in the “Value Data” box to 1 and then click “OK”. make sure the base selected is “Hexadecimal”. Repeat this for the other two created files namely “Links” and “SecAddSites”. Assign the values of this these two files as 1 similarly.
Exit the Registry Editor to complete your task.
This process improves the potential of Windows 7 to amplify the effectiveness of the the self-protection feature of Internet Explorer 8 to a standard which no antivirus program or any other third party software can promise to achieve. You are now much more secured with the upgraded self-protection feature blocking all possible trojan or malware invasions.
[P.S. : To stay on the safe side, its recommended that you still be careful enough not to visit websites of unknown sources or read emails from unverified sources.]
Can you do this by the local security policy editor?
Also it would be useful to push it out via group policy in business networks…