Windows 10 Start Menu XML

[ITGURU]

So i'm playing with the latest build of Windows 10 1511 and customising the start menu. I got it how I wanted with set tiles with Word, excel, etc , exported the XML, placed in sysvol and set the path in a GPO. Logging on as any user and the start menu appears right.

 

Set up a second clean install of windows 10, linked to domain and PC in same OU as base PC, however when users log on I just get the single column with the default APPS.

 

there's no additional tiles with the ones customised in the start menu XML, and don't know why?!

[ITGURU]

Oddball, but I've just rebooted the PC twice after installing other software and now it's displaying correctly!

 

Well it was for one user, but the next one I logged on it didn't show!

 

Anyone got the xml start menu policy working reliably?

Edited December 3, 2015 by ITGURU

[robjduk]

Funny you say that because it almost brought me to tears last week.... Long story short (and sit down for this one....) Microsoft have stopped the ability of the start menu to be included in a roaming profile. According to them, they want each piece of hardware to be its own experience.

To follow up, no i have no idea how this is going to work or how to deploy W10 anymore. Would love to hear I am wrong and was just about to post, asking for help in the matter when I saw your post.

 

Source:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/1614045d-a6da-478d-9e95-eba6d0bbd687/windows-10-start-menu-and-roaming-profiles?forum=win10itprogeneral&tduid=(8bfa0cf252ff2775e5dfe3e92793636f)(256380)(2459594)(TnL5HPStwNw-47idAOmv5P6XEGdGw_pZxw)()

[liveman2]

Could you just place the shortcuts on the users desktop and bypass the start menu ?

[Garacesh]

Do redirected menus still work, rather than roaming ones?

[Arthur]

I've just rebooted the PC twice after installing other software and now it's displaying correctly!

You might be interested in the following blog post. It covers many of the issues you experienced.

 

https://jprudente.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/customizing-the-windows-10-start-menu-for-enterprises

 

...some basic testing revealed at least one problem pretty quickly. If the target of an item pinned to the start menu is not present on the system when the start menu loads, the pin will disappear. So consider a situation where a user logs on to a fresh machine that hasn’t finished installing Microsoft Office. Their pin for Excel (as shown in the XML above) will be missing. What’s worse, it will never come back, even when Office gets installed. The only way to get the pin to appear is to delete the user’s profile and allow a new profile to be created. This seriously complicates things as it means you’ve got one single chance to have a user’s start menu display properly.

 

The problem seems to be the start layout import/export is designed more for a situation where you are creating a reference image, preloaded with software. In our case we do all of our software installations via group policy as needed, so the software installed on a given machine can vary and there’s likewise no guarantee that a piece of software will be installed the second the machine is finished being imaged.

 

Early testing showed a few other important things:

 

• If there are any errors in the XML, Windows will ignore it entirely and revert to the user’s prior start menu, whether that was a previously valid custom one, or the default out-of-box start menu.
   
   
  
• Adding comments to the XML likewise results in the start layout being ignored. (This in fairness is mentioned in the MS documentation).
  

After a lot of further testing, trial, and error, we’ve determined the following:

 

• You can only pin items that are present in "all apps".
   
   
  
• The "all apps" database is generated only at boot-up, and is generated from the items found in the user’s profile plus the “all users” profile, in these two locations:
  

  • %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\

    
    

  • %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\

    
    

  [*]There is clearly some logic that causes the database to be rebuilt when a new program is installed, but that does not seem to be exposed at all to the end user, so for all practical purposes if you want to add an item to “all apps” programmatically, it requires a reboot after adding the item to one of the above paths.

   

   

  [*]As mentioned earlier, if an item that is not found in the “all apps” database is pinned to a custom start menu layout, the pin will disappear, never to be seen again without deleting the user’s profile.

   

   

  [*]Directly linking to EXEs is not reliable. It’s not clear why this is, but it’s better to pin a shortcut to the EXE. To clarify, if you want to pin an EXE, you should instead create a shortcut to that EXE, get the shortcut in “all apps” and then pin that shortcut to the start menu.

   

   

  [*]Attempting to pin a path does not appear to work across users. It’s not clear why this is. I resorted to a very convoluted method: writing a short C# app that opened the desired path, then linking to a shortcut to that EXE. It’s a crazy method but the only way I could get to consistently work.

   

   

  [*]The link to “Microsoft.InternetExplorer.Default” works inconsistently as well. I found it better to create a shortcut to IE and pin that to the start menu.

   

   

  [*]Here’s a very strange one…If you redirect the start menu (i.e. the pre-Win 10 way), items pinned to the Win 10 start menu are unreliable. Win 10 sometimes seems to take the shortcut from the local "all apps" and other times from the redirected start menu. You must turn off redirection for Win 10 devices to reliably use the customized start menu layouts.

   

   

  [*]You must also disable the group policy “Remove common program groups from Start Menu,” otherwise the “all users” profile items will not be loaded into the user’s all apps database, resulting in missing pins.

There are a lot of moving pieces here, but by following the above we’ve been able to create a custom start menu layout that works the way we need it to. Hope this helps!

@Michael. Thought you might be interested too (even though you are now using Classic Shell).

Edited December 29, 2015 by Arthur

[Michael]

Thanks @Arthur - I think this goes to show the official Microsoft Start Menu way is far too complicated and inconsistent.

 

The example above is perfect in that some Admins (like myself) like to pre-install most software, whereas some Admins prefer installing everything afterwards, either by MSI or other means.

 

Classic Shell overall has solved more problems than created - for both Schools I manage or indeed private customers who want an easy to use Start Menu. This was especially the case with Windows 8 and 8.1, but less so Windows 10. I think it's more an issue in network domains, where we want a consistent, functional Start Menu.

 

Interestingly, I've also found that Microsoft Updates are also getting installed faster. The Windows 10 default (as far as I can tell), is a Hybrid Shutdown, so it doesn't always install updates on Shutdown, whereas Classic Shell's default appears to offer 'Install Updates and Shutdown' as the default where applicable just as Windows 7 did.

[Garacesh]

@Arthur

Thanks for the link, pretty helpful!

 

However, not everything in the Start Menu comes from %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ and %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\. 3D Builder, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, etc etc, basically all non-folders, aren't in there. Do you have any idea where they're being served from? Is that the database created on-boot that's mentioned? Or will using an XML get rid of these links? It sounds like the XML is just tiles?

Edited January 7, 2016 by Garacesh

[gaz003]

Can anyone help? I have pretty much locked down windows 10 for students yay!

I have created a start.xml file and tested as a test student account. The office / Internet explorer icons all work great

 

I am now trying to get it so that it also shows Tiles for the users documents, videos, photos but I seem to be struggling to do this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

all the folders are located in the users H:\ drive rather than through roaming profiles as we now use local profiles.

[beany1]

Just create shortcuts in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and then pin those to the start from the programs list on the start menu. Then export the xml. I even add great big tiles for shutdown and log off. Edited May 25, 2016 by beany1

[Garacesh]

Can anyone help? I have pretty much locked down windows 10 for students yay!

I have created a start.xml file and tested as a test student account. The office / Internet explorer icons all work great

 

I am now trying to get it so that it also shows Tiles for the users documents, videos, photos but I seem to be struggling to do this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

all the folders are located in the users H:\ drive rather than through roaming profiles as we now use local profiles.

 

Login as the local administrator. Set up the tiles as you'd like them to be for a student. Launch powershell and execute Export-StartLayout -Path C:\StartLayout.xml (of course you can use any path you like, as long as you can write there)

 

Store that XML somewhere that the kids can access (NETLOGON, copied to the local machine, etc) and then use User Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar, Start Layout to set the XML file.

 

The XML file only modifies pinned tiles. To my knowledge, it does not modify the Start Menu contents. Use Folder Redirection for that.

[gaz003]

Thanks beany1 worked a treat!

[mullet_man]

Can anyone help? I have pretty much locked down windows 10 for students yay!

I have created a start.xml file and tested as a test student account. The office / Internet explorer icons all work great

 

I am now trying to get it so that it also shows Tiles for the users documents, videos, photos but I seem to be struggling to do this. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

all the folders are located in the users H:\ drive rather than through roaming profiles as we now use local profiles.

 

I've been testing the start menu all weekend and finally started to get somewhere. I initially struggled adding My Computer, My Documents but found a way of doing it which might work for you.

 

Create a shortcut by right clicking on the desktop and typing in explorer.exe "N:" obviously substituting the correct drives. My Computer is explorer.exe "" for example.

 

Place them into your start menu and then pin to the start screen and it should work.

 

You could then do explorer.exe "N:\videos" or "N:\photos"

 

Hopefully that will work for you.

[KK20]

I a similar vein to the above, I create shortcuts to various programs that may or may not be installed on a PC, store them in a network share, copy them to a (via startup script) c:\program files folder of my creation and use a script that adds them to the %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ as appropriate. In 1607 this approach seems to work for me (students have roaming profile).

 

The startmenu and taskbar have been a pain in the arse IMHO

[mullet_man]

The startmenu and taskbar have been a pain in the arse IMHO

 

Tell me about it, think I've finally cracked it though after spending all weekend on it.

[ArthurDent]

I'm new here and I see no news on this topic since August. We are now upgrading Windows 8.1 machines to 10 (Ver reports 10.0.10586) and we have some issues with Start Screen layout which are baffling us.

 

As our 8.1 PCs are Enterprise version, the first few upgrades we did were to 10 Enterprise (logical we thought!) but found some problems with Language settings and some Apps missing that we discovered are OK in Edu so we changed over. We kept one Ent machine in the cave just in case of whatever. As we will have a mix of Win8 and Win10 on the network for a while we encountered the first problem in that you can only have one "Start Layout File" GPO entry and the XML files for 8 and 10 are incompatible. We assign Start Screen by user not computer (one for teachers and one for pupils) so although we have the Win 8 machines and the Win 10 machines in different OUs, we can't put the entry in a policy linked to them. It has to be linked to the Users' OUs. To get round this we set a system environment variable (%WinVer%) to 8 or 10 using the Registry key setting in Preferences in Computer OU linked GPOs (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment\ if anyone's interested), and put %WinVer% in the GPO Start Screen entry filename - e.g. \\...path...\Teacher%WinVer%.xml. The files are in a folder in sysvol so we have: Teacher10.xml, Teacher8.xml and the same for Pupil. This works a treat with Win8.1 and Win10 ENTERPRISE and we know the %WinVer% is being correctly resolved but it doesn't work on the Win 10 EDUCATION PCs - we just get a grey empty box, even on the same computer used to generate the XML file. The XML files were exported from the 10 Edu machine and we have tried it both with and without the line "" that some forums say to remove.

 

Sorry about the long winded preamble, but as I'm going to ask if anyone can help I thought it would be useful to answer the expected questions before they were asked.

So, can anyone offer any words of wisdom please?

[ArthurDent]

Having read and re-read the posts and referred articles by ITGURU and Arthur (no relation) from Dec last year I must come to the conclusion that W10 Ent and W10 Edu work differently. We have Start Menu re-directed in the old way to a network share - it's been like that since folder redirection was invented, and the entries in the All Apps start menu which were used to pin the Start Screen tiles are shortcuts from there (at least THAT still works!). The articles all state that the All Apps "database" is populated at boot-up, from the "$allusersprofile%" path and the user's %appdata% profile path, but how can this be true as at that time the system doesn't know which user will log on (especially on a network, but even with multiple local users), and %appdata% will not be set. I'm not convinced. In any case, we find it is taking shortcuts from the re-directed start menu folder in Ent but not in Edu. So ...

 

I copied the shortcuts from the network share into %alluserprofile%\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs and pinned some to Start Screen (the targets of the shortcuts are in the PC's Program Files). Still nothing shows for a Teacher user (which has a policy with "Remove common program groups from Start Menu" disabled). I then thought I'd start from first principles. Logged on as a local admin I see the "Default" Start Scren which consists of as-supplied tiles for e.g. Edge, Photos, Calendar etc. but no installed programs. I exported that Start Screen. Breakthrough? - that shows the as-supplied tiles for a Teacher user. Hooray - progress I thought. Then, back as the local Admin, I pinned some programs that appear in the All Apps list to the default Start Screen, but they DON'T appear for the Teacher. I added a tile for Calculator and that did show up. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

Just as an aside, although we have the Start Screen XML files on the DC sysvol, I have tried it with the file on the PC's C: with the same results, and yes, I have also tried deleting the user's roaming profile (and we delete cached copies of roaming profiles from the PCs after logoff).

 

Conclusion so far - Microsoft don't want you to be able to pin any installed programs to a common Start Screen.

I really can't understand how anybody has got this to work. Please somebody prove me wrong?

[Garacesh]

From my experience with Windows 10* Enterprise LTSB**, the Start Menu can still be redirected via the Start Menu option in Folder Redirection, same as Win7. The Start Menu XML only relates to tiles, the handle 'Start Menu Layout' is a little disingenuous.

 

That being said, there are a few things that will persist in the Start Menu regardless of the folder redirection. I recall OneDrive and Settings doing this, though there may be others. (access to Settings, as a point, can be disabled by the 'Disallow access to Control Panel' GPO.. The icon still shows up, but clicking it does nothing)

 

* Although something did royally balls up my deployment and we reverted. Spoke to one of the Council's IT techs, he says I'm not the only one who had that, and it was an update that ruined everything, which given all the issues began on a Tuesday, I'm inclined to believe.

** I chose to go with LTSB because it cut out all the XBox et-al.

[thimon]

I really can't understand how anybody has got this to work. Please somebody prove me wrong?

 

It took a lot of trial and error to get ours working. I found you would export your start menu in PowerShell and get varying results even though you had changed nothing. Finally got an .xml that worked (see below) to allow a partially locked start menu as indicated by the padlock symbol above Edge. Users cannot move or delete these pinned apps, then under OneNote, VLC and SIMS they can pin their own Apps if they wish. The finished product looking like:

 

Our .xml looks like this:

 

 

*edit* The post it making a smiley face out of : and D. If anyone knows how to remove this that would be great! Should look like this...

 

 

Hopefully this will help someone out. Took us an age to get it working how we wanted to!

Edited December 2, 2016 by thimon

[KK20]

Arthurdent, Our 1511 was enterprise. I moved to EDU in 1607 as I wasn't convinced I was licensed (with all the "you should be with your software assurance just phone MS to add it to your agreement" debacle). I used the same system of creating an image, deployment, GPOs and the same startmenu XML (with the taskbar bit added to the bottom of the XML). It worked on both.

 

I only use notepad to edit the XML not notepad++ and it seems I am one of the few with the XML element at the top.

[Asgard]

Here is ours (Win10 Enterprise 1511 - v5 Mandatory Profile)

 

 

and our XML code is;

 

 

 

Deployed it to a folder within C:\Windows\BSFC\ which also houses our background wallpaper, DefaultApps Customizations (which we binned and just forcibly replaced the default one) and a couple of icon shortcuts.

Edited December 3, 2016 by Asgard
Code option didnt work on iPhone

[Garacesh]

@Asgard, use [CODE] and [/CODE] to stop smileys

[Asgard]

Hi @Garacesh did do , on my phone and the code showed up blank.

will login to a laptop now and fix.

Edited December 3, 2016 by Asgard

[ArthurDent]

So, here's the rub. I have two identical machines installed with W10 Edu - same version level (no upgrades installed yet). One is a clean install from the DVD. One is an upgrade from 8.1 using the same DVD. They are both in the same OU. On the upgrade machine the user gets the Start Screen. On the clean install machine he doesn't. Any more ideas or experiences? I'm off for Xmas now - back on the 5th Jan but I'll have an occasional peek here if my state of mind allows!

Merry Christmas everyone!

[Garacesh]

Isn't there something about Windows 10 that makes it a start screen or a start menu depending on the screen size? Fairly sure there's a gpo somewhere that forces which one you get.. Something like 'start menu style'.