Default browser on Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Session Host

Question

We have installed a Windows Server 2016 Remote Desktop Session Host (actually 1 broker server with 2 session host servers, all Windows Server 2016). Users log in with roaming profiles (stored on the broker server), local profiles are deleted when users log off.

Each time the users log in and try to open a website, they have to choose wich browser they want to use: Google Chrome or IE. The option "always use this program..." is checked. While in their current session, it is not asked any more, but when they logoff and they log back in, they get the question again.

Any one knows how to fix this? This setting should be stored in the users' registry not?

Thanks, Michiel.

Solution

The four FileExts Reg keys provided Esa Jokinen work (.htm, .html, etc), but the other 3 dont (http, https, ftp).

URLAssociations\http and URLAssociations\https dont work because of Microsoft creating the Hash value in these keys unique to the server when the user sets them, so when the user roams to a different server Windows ignores the key and shows the "Choose program" dialog box instead. This is really annoying to the user. But i did find a way to fix this for my users.

To get around this, i've used the SetDefaultBrowser applet created Christoph Kolbicz located here: https://kolbi.cz/blog/2017/11/10/setdefaultbrowser-set-the-default-browser-per-user-on-windows-10-and-server-2016-build-1607/

I simply set a GPO to run the applet when the users login, and it sets Default browser in the Session to Chrome. (SetDefaultBrowser.exe Chrome)

Comments

[Mickeybyte]

It seems to be solved by disabling the GPO setting to delete roaming profiles at logoff. This doesn't realy sounds logical to me, because I would suspect this "default browser" setting to be in the current users settings and thus save in the roaming profile.