I did a brief search online for an IE8 ADM file for group policy.  I didn’t particularly find anything of interest and the one I did find had errors in the file and wouldn’t work so in my impatience I decided to extract the IE8 installer from Microsoft and see what it had to offer me.  I found what I needed!

If you just want to get this over with and download IE8’s ADM group policy file, right click here and select “save as” –> Link

For the more adventuresome that want to know how you get it or if you want to get it because you don’t trust the link to that Trojan horse above (joking) then this is how you do it!

  1. Download IE8’s package from Micro$oft –> Here
  2. Make sure you have an archive utility like 7-zip or winrar that can extract exe files
  3. Open this folder on your network “\\domaincontrolernamehere\c$\WINDOWS\inf”
  4. On your domain controller rename the “inetres.adm” to “inetres.adm_original“
  5. Now navigate to the folder with the extracted files, the brand new IE8 extracted contents
  6. Copy the “initres.adm” in that folder to your domain controllers inf folder “\\domaincontrolernamehere\c$\WINDOWS\inf”

* I’d also recommend copying this to your local clients (your computer) “C:\Windows\inf folder” just in case you’re managing group policy from that client.

Now, open your GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) and you should see all new options.  Note that the IE8 ADM is compatible all the way back to IE6 or so I’ve read on MSDN forums.