List of trusted sites went empty recently, yes the Trusted Sites list got empty, it says: “No sites are in this zone” how to resolve this issue
We had an issue like some one edited the default domain policy to update the trusted site list and we have lost entire IE configuration (Like trusted site list) because he used a different account to edit the group policy, it’s a known issue in Windows server 2003, why it’s clear the IE configuration? Let’s explore this…
Because Internet Explorer policy settings would change based on the policy settings enabled on the administrative workstation used to view the settings.
If you edit the Group policy to configure the internet Explorer settings, it will open the internet options from the system where you modifying the policy, let’s say you login with admin account and this account doesn’t linked to any policy including the default domain policy which has the IE configuration details like trusted sites, if you open and edit the policy to update the trusted site through GPMC, it should be empty because the admin account used to edit the GPO doesn’t linked to any policy
If you click ok then this empty setting will overwrite the policy settings and this will apply to entire users, trusted site will be empty for all the users in the domain
That’s why you have to use the admin account that should be linked to the policy you want to edit (only for IE configuration), while the time of logon the policy will apply and you can able to see the list of trusted sites and other IE configuration setting and able to append the IE settings without any issue
Thanks to Microsoft, in windows 2008 this behavior has been changed, you can change the Internet Explorer policy settings without affecting the policy configuration, because these settings are registry based settings unlike windows server 2003, more in fo about the GPO features
