Trusted Sites button greyed out in IE7 or IE8 for Windows 2003 Terminal Server domain users sessions

• Windows 2003 terminal server
• Service pack 2
• Internet explorer 7 or 8

In Internet Explorer in Tools/Security if you click on any of the zones of the slider was greyed out and could not be adjusted.

The site is running with a Windows SBS 2003 active directory controller on a separate server. We already had one Windows 2003 terminal server installed without a problem.

This was a freshly loaded second terminal server.

Users were getting content warnings on every site they went to.

There was no specific local security or group policies set which should be effecting the users ability to adjust their security zone settings.

In order to overcome this I implemented a group policy in active directory on the users Organisation Unit.

User configuration\Windows settings\Internet Explorer maintenance\security zones and content ratings

Choose Import the current security zones and privacy settings and modify the settings

I set the Internet security level to Medium-high

Then from a command prompt on the SBS server ran gpupdate

Logging in as a user on the terminal server and opening the Internet shows the zone settings all as custom.

The users are now no longer getting pop-up messages and the group policy applies for all terminal server users.

Users that were logged in at the time of the group policy update needed to log off and on again to apply the setting change.