Prevent user from deleting history in IE

To prevent the history from being deleted in Internet Explorer, you will need to edit the registry. If you don’t know how to do this, I have created a utility in the Downloads section of my website under the Internet Safety Category that will do this for you.

These instructions will work on IE 6 and 7 on XP and Vista.

1. Open regedit. Open start menu and click on run. Type ‘regedit’ and click “Ok”
2. Go to this registry branch.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbars\Restrictions

3. Create a new dword key called NoToolbarOptions and set the value to 0
4. Go to the following registry branch.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

5. Create a new dword key called NoToolbarCustomize and set the value to 0
6. Go to the final registry branch.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

7. Create a dword key called History and set the vaule to 1.

Close regedit. If you have Internet Explorer open, close it as well. Now let’s see if it worked. Open IE and open the Internet Options window (Do this by going to the Tools menu and then Internet Options.) Under the General tab, you should be unable to clear the history.

To re-enable history deletion, change the above History key to 0.