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Question
Saturday, February 27, 2016 11:53 PM | 1 vote
We are deploying Windows 10 and are in the customization part of that process. The only problem left is the Edge default settings that will show the News feed as default for our users when they start Edge.
The settings regarding the news feed is stored in a protected registry value (ProtectedHomepages). If I export that value and deploy in on another user or a computer or the default profile, the Edge will reset itself to default settings.
“HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppContainer\Storage\microsoft.microsoftedge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\MicrosoftEdge\Protected - It is a violation of Windows Policy to modify. See aka.ms/browserpolicy”
ProtectedHomepages
So I did some monitoring with Wireshark to get all the URL that is requested when the Edge starts. The idea was to prevent Edge from contacting the servers hosting the news feed.
When I put all those URLs in the local hostfile pointing to an invalid IP-address, it instead started to communicate directly by IP-address. Impressive!
I then created an outbound firewall rule that blocked the IP-address it was communicating to.
Finally, I got what I wanted. A clean start page in Edge with only the search field.
Instead of doing this client modification we are looking at blocking the whole msn.com with subdomains in the central firewall. This will give the same result, a clean start page!
I don’t think Microsoft wants corporations to block msn.com to get rid of the News feed so I hope they will provide a way to configure the default start page settings in the future.
Have anyone else found a better solution to handle this problem?
All replies (3)
Monday, February 29, 2016 11:55 AM ✅Answered | 4 votes
If you only want to block an IP for Microsoft Edge in Windows Firewall. Use this Powershell command.
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Block Microsoft Edge News Feed by IP" -RemoteAddress "204.79.197.203" -Action "Block" -Direction "Outbound" -Package "S-1-15-2-3624051433-2125758914-1423191267-1740899205-1073925389-3782572162-737981194"
That commandline will get rid of the News Feed and give you a clean start page with only the Search field and it will only affect the Microsoft Edge application. You will still be able to browse to www.msn.com by using any other browser like IE/Chrome/Firefox.
Thursday, August 11, 2016 11:11 AM ✅Answered | 4 votes
Update:
This workaround is not needed since Windows 10 Anniversary Update 1607.
They have finally given us some GPOs to handle this.
Lastest ADM/ADMX templates:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53430
Group Policy Path: User or Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Microsoft Edge
Allow web content on New Tab page: Disabled
**Configure Home pages: **Set this to <about:blank> or whatever webpage you want like <https://google.com>
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 11:13 PM
That, my friend, is truly an answer. You saved me breaking out Fiddler and tracking this down. The "Hide my feed" option in Edge is cosmetic only; thanks for providing an easy way to restore elements of choice & privacy when opening one's browser.