Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) Well, what a bundle of fun this is turning out to be. So it turns out that to be able to edit the Start Screen easily, you need to install Enterprise and not Pro. I missed that bit. So has anyone managed to do this using Pro? Is there anything else this is going to effect (due to using Pro and not Enterprise)? I'm trying to decide if its worth just carrying on with Pro or start all over again with Enterprise.... Edited January 10, 2014 by Little-Miss
SovietRussia Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Well, what a bundle of fun this is turning out to be. So it turns out that to be able to edit the Start Screen easily, you need to install Enterprise and not Pro. I missed that bit. So has anyone managed to do this using Pro? Is there anything else this is going to effect (using Pro and not Enterprise)? I'm trying to decide if its worth just carrying on with Pro or start all over again with Enterprise.... No Pro - Even with Enterprise, it does not work properly. If it does not like a "shortcut", it just decides not to display it - Oh and you can't use file paths, have you use folder GUIDs to add shortcuts
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 Oh joy... How are other schools getting around this then?
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 Yeah it's called Windows 7 Professional Ha! Thanks for that...*looks at the shiny touch enabled PC's* Not an option.
Michael Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 I've used Classicshell on Windows 8 devices. Is it a Windows RT device or a tablet running Windows 8 x86 for example?
SovietRussia Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Oh joy... How are other schools getting around this then? We just left ours to work, eventually the SIMS.net tile appeared, but My Computer (Built in System Tile) doesn't - Damm Microsoft.
AngryTechnician Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Apparently there is an unofficial method that is supposed to work on non-Enterprise editions too: Customizing the Windows 8.1 Start Screen? Don’t follow Microsoft’s guidance | Aaron Parker Scroll down to the paragraph that begins "Fortunately, there’s a far easier way..." I haven't actually tried it yet, and we're on Enterprise here anyway, but looks worth a shot (and simpler than the official method).
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 Nope, this is a very nice Dell desktop AIO. Windows 8.1 Pro x64.. Ok, so when a user logs on at the moment, I get taken to a start screen with no icons....so i can't get to the desktop. Slightly unhelpful. Even the keyboard doesnt help. The apps screen seems to have picked up what looks like my redirected desktop icons.
j_the_geek Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Nope, this is a very nice Dell desktop AIO. Windows 8.1 Pro x64.. Ok, so when a user logs on at the moment, I get taken to a start screen with no icons....so i can't get to the desktop. Slightly unhelpful. Even the keyboard doesnt help. Have you tried the Windows Key + D to load the desktop, or right-click on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and select Desktop?
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 (edited) oh! Now hovering down in the bottom left and right clicking bought up the windows icon, so that worked it stays after that. Reboot and its gone again. But thats no good for the kids. What have i disabled? EDIT: It doesnt appear in the Apps list either.... Edited January 10, 2014 by Little-Miss
TheCrust Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 (edited) The apps screen seems to have picked up what looks like my redirected desktop icons. Yes, it will if you run a redirected desktop / start menu (as we do on our Win 7 PCs). It confused the chuff out of me the first time it happened as half the tiles I thought should have been present on a vanilla 8.1 image didn't seem to be when I logged on as a user account. If you log on with an account that isn't locked down, but is subject to this redirected desktop / Start Menu policy, you can use the redirected set of Apps tiles you get from the redirection to customize your Metro start screen - set it up how you want, run the powershell to extract the XML file to a public area that all can have read access to, set the GPO accordingly to point to this file as per the MS instructions - and then anyone else who logs on with the same redirected desktop / start menu will get that same set of Metro tiles and will be unable to change them further. It seems a bit of a faff, but at least that's how it worked for me when I experimented with it a few weeks back. I did notice that if you didn't redirect the desktop / start menu - that is, you removed the policy on your Win 8.1 machines because you thought you didn't need it anymore - then the customized Metro screen I created using it broke. The XML was still applied, but as the apps tiles I was referencing were no longer present, the main Metro screen looked a bit bare. Edited January 11, 2014 by TheCrust
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