Windows 10 Startlayout.xml

[Kevin Whelan]

Has anybody figured this out for deployment of pinned networked drives or folders,  ve spent countless hours on this trying xml edits, exporting working layouts and then when a new user logs on there's just a blank tile. None of the documentation matches what you get when you actually do an export, their templates online are quite different and people seem to get all sorts of various results with differing templates.

To make matters worse if you try to include the taskbar xml into the equation you can't actually export the file , it needs manual intervention.

Ive copied shortcuts into everywhich where all userprofiles, default templates,

Are we just supposed to give up on GPO deployments and all use intune and pc settings to apply things,

this is just wasting so much time and stress banging my head here.

[Simon Wright]

I feel your pain.

Once i had a basic layout (both start menu and taskbar) created i just tweak it manually by editing the XML.

I have a local folder with all the shortcuts which gets populated through GPO.

The layout seems to be hit and miss, sometimes icons appear, sometimes they don't. I gave up caring.

As long as the shortcuts are in the start menu, students can find them.

As for mapped drives, did away with them a while back and just use folder re-direction for their docs, music, pics, videos, app data etc...

There is however a legacy mapped drive which they can access via file explorer.

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

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[Sue Way]

I use a local group policy  pointing to an xml file in root. I pin "This PC", as it has network drives, and our standard build apps to the start menu and remove any live tiles. I save the xml file in a local space on C Drive then save the image...

 All student computers have the same start menu and it is not editable..

For staff laptops once they have have logged on I turn off the local group policy and they can then edit the start menu..

I have attached a screen shot of the location of the local group policy..

Sue

[Kevin Whelan]

thanks yes that's all standard. the issue is the many undocumented changes to the xml over differing windows versions and the fact that the export command actually makes it completely wrong to start with.

Ive finally got this figured out now.

A lot of the internet examples will work for taskbar or start menu but not both at same time which is supposed to be what happens.well worked for version 1607 and previous

the answer is to export a startmenu xml, however this will have no taskbar info on it at all,

this will work until you add the taskbar info on the bottom as per internet instructions then you are back to having either start or taskbar but not both

once you have added the taskbar section you need to go back to your start menu items and change all the paths from DESKTOPAPPLICATIONPATH to DESKTOPAPPLICATIONID

then you need to run powershell get-startmenu

this will give you the new paths to the apps for your start menu

basically I think having DESKTOPAPPLICATIONPATH in start and taskbar section confuses the xml

heres a quick example using office 365 word app and photoshop

           <start:DesktopApplicationTile DesktopApplicationID="{6D809377-6AF0-444B-8957-A3773F02200E}\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Photoshop.exe" Size="2x2" Column="0" Row="0" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile DesktopApplicationID="Microsoft.Office.WINWORD.EXE.15" Size="2x2" Column="2" Row="0" />

Don't ask how many hours Ive spent on this

[Nick Steenson]

I won't ask, but I appreciate you having done so. I just gave up in the end (as there were already too many head-shaped holes in my desk) and went a little loose with what the start menu looked like, future images (to be built shortly) will take it into account.

:thanks:

Nick

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Nick Steenson IT Manager Mt Aspiring College p: +643 443 0463 (Ext 830) w: https://nick.mtaspiring.school.nz/ e: stee...@mtaspiring.school.nz

[WHS Techs]

We use the following when deploying. Dont seem to have any issues. You can add more <start:Group> as required

CopyLayout.bat

copy /y "%~dp0layoutmodification-win10-1607-o365.xml" "C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\LayoutModification.xml"

LayoutModification.xml

<LayoutModificationTemplate
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification"
xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout"
xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout"
xmlns:taskbar="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/TaskbarLayout"
Version="1">
  <LayoutOptions StartTileGroupCellWidth="6" />
  <DefaultLayoutOverride>
    <StartLayoutCollection>
      <defaultlayout:StartLayout GroupCellWidth="6" xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout">
        <start:Group Name="Office 365" xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout">
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="2" Row="0" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Excel 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="0" Row="0" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Outlook 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="4" Row="0" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\PowerPoint 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="0" Row="2" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Word 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="2" Row="2" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Publisher 2016.lnk" />
          <start:DesktopApplicationTile Size="2x2" Column="4" Row="2" DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\OneNote 2016.lnk" />
        </start:Group>
      </defaultlayout:StartLayout>
    </StartLayoutCollection>
  </DefaultLayoutOverride>


  <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
    <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
      <taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\KMR.lnk" />
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Google Chrome.lnk" />
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Outlook 2016.lnk" />
      </taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
    </defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
  </CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
</LayoutModificationTemplate>

[WHS Techs]

For network drives we apply this reg key to open to 'this PC' as well. I wouldnt worry with multiple different mapped drives pinned personally

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /t REG_DWORD /f /v LaunchTo /d "1"