Scott Hanselman

Never a good sign: "The operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator"

October 04, 2003 Comment on this post [2] Posted in Musings | Tools
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At someone's urging I installed Spyware Search and Destroy in order to compare it to Ad-Aware and somewhere along the way I got this lovely, while hitting Tools|Options:

"The operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."

So, I contacted myself (by calling my IT helpdesk, namely, me) and I told myself to go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions\NoBrowserOptions and set it to "0"

Why Search and Destroy thought that 1 was a better value, I do not know, but I'd have appreciated being told ahead of time. ;)

Of course, I checked their online FAQ, and noticed this condescending note:

Internet Explorer tells you to contact your administrator when you try to access the IE settings?
This can happen if you use Spybot-S&D in advanced mode and you have used the Immunize feature without reading all the text ;)

Hm...true, I didn't read it.  True, that IS stupid of me.  But is it really my fault, or their silly DE-fault? 

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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October 06, 2003 6:08
Erm, it may well have been me what suggested S&D. It is not the most user friendly program out there and the documentation is somewhat marginal too. However, it does flag things that Ad-Aware misses, on my system. And if one is nervy enough to run two spyware programs to catch each other short then a certain amount of friction from a free product may have to be tollerated. At least that's what I tell myself. :)
October 23, 2005 2:40
Perhaps you can help me... I ran into this same problem as mentioned above, and tried your soloution, however, as soon as I got to the IE folder in the HKEYS.. there were no more folders. SO I could not get to restrictions and NOBrowser Options... Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have Windows XP

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.