Reset Security Zone Entries in Internet Explorer

When malware hits your system, it is often seen that it makes changes to your Windows system and adds malicious sites to Internet Explorer’s trusted zone list. It also adds good sites (like sites of antivirus companies) to the restricted sites. The overall effect is that Internet Explorer shows no warning when opening those malicious sites, while at the same time it blocks good sites which may help you remove the malware. But you can easily reset these security zone entries (particularly restricted and trusted zone entries) in Internet Explorer by following these instructions :

Method 1

  1. Close all the open windows of the Internet Explorer browser.
  2. Press the keyboard shortcut Windows logo key + R to open the Run dialog. In the Run dialog, type regedit and press Enter to start the Registry Editor.

    Reset Internet Explorer Security Zones

  3. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key :
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInternet SettingsZoneMap
  4. You would find many subkeys under ZoneMap. You have to delete the subkeys named Domains, Ranges and EscDomains. To delete a subkey, right-click on it and select Delete to delete it as shown.

    Reset Internet Explorer Security Zones

  5. Similarly, navigate to the following registry key and delete the subkeys named Domains, Ranges and EscDomains :
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInternet SettingsZoneMap
  6. Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Method 2

If you do not want to use the Registry Editor method, then you can just use the registry entries file to remove the Internet Explorer Zone entries. Just download the reset_ie_zone.zip to your Windows’ desktop. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to your desktop. After closing all the open Internet Explorer windows, double-click on reset_ie_zone.reg and when asked, choose Yes to add information to your Windows registry. After this you need to restart your computer in order to let the changes take effect.