Windows 10 Start Menu Woes

[MrKJLS]

So, we are starting our Windows 10 deployment and we are having some issues with Start Menu. For students who use mandatory profiles, it works fine and works perfectly every time.

 

But for Staff, it doesn't work as it should do. Staff, here use Roaming profiles. We are having the issue where the start menu appears with all the correct items but normal windows application won't be clickable but the Windows 10 UWP work fine. At the moment the only way we have of fixing this by resetting Staff Profiles. One thing we did notice it happened if two machines were logged in at the same time and that's where the start menu would break. We can't find anything in the event log and it seems clear.

 

Any Solutions?

 

Thanks!

[Katy]

How are you creating your mandatory profiles? I have the problem where if a user has a mandatory profiles (created the "official" way with sysprep/CopyProfile) the start button just doesn't do anything - they can right click it to get the Win+x menu but left click and hitting the windows flag key on the keyboard just doesn't do anything.

 

We also have problems with roaming start menus randomly going black or stopping working altogether, again the only fix is to reset the profile - and nothing is logged anywhere.

 

It just seems Win 10 isn't ready for use anywhere except at home.

[MrKJLS]

How are you creating your mandatory profiles? I have the problem where if a user has a mandatory profiles (created the "official" way with sysprep/CopyProfile) the start button just doesn't do anything - they can right click it to get the Win+x menu but left click and hitting the windows flag key on the keyboard just doesn't do anything.

 

We also have problems with roaming start menus randomly going black or stopping working altogether, again the only fix is to reset the profile - and nothing is logged anywhere.

 

It just seems Win 10 isn't ready for use anywhere except at home.

 

We created our profiles using the official way as well. Your problem with roaming profiles sounds identical to what we have.

 

We are trying mandatory profiles with UE-V to allow staff settings to roam as the start menu seems to work well with mandatory profiles.

[Arthur]

I have the problem where if a user has a mandatory profiles (created the "official" way with sysprep/CopyProfile) the start button just doesn't do anything

CopyProfile might be the culprit. It's known to break OneDrive (and probably some other things too).

 

• https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/odfb/2017/02/03/onedrive-doesnt-work-in-windows-10-when-building-a-custom-image
  
• https://twitter.com/tmintner/status/827606106092482560
  

[Katy]

Annoys me how all these articles say "The solution is to remove CopyProfile from the unattend XML" but then doesn't go on to give a new "official" way to create the damn mandatory profile. There are technet articles published in 2017 that still claim the way to do it is CopyProfile=true and sysprep.

 

I spent most of the day trying mandatory profiles with Win 10 (LTSB 2015), if you do it the "official" way by running sysyprep with CopyProfile=true in the unattend you get a broken start menu. If you copy the default profile without running sysprep then it works. Kinda defeats the purpose though but at least I can tweak the default profile's ntuser.man in regedit so better than nothing.

 

I found the startmenu troubleshooter (http://aka.ms/diag_StartMenu) annoyingly you have to be an administrator to run it - using "run as" won't work as it will then examine the wrong profile - but it suggested ShellHostExperience (or ShellExperienceHost, forget which way it was worded) and Cortana modern apps needed re-installing.

 

Only thing left to test on is build up a PC with Win10 off the domain and don't let the MDT script that removes the modern AppX packages run.

[Arthur]

at least I can tweak the default profile's ntuser.man in regedit so better than nothing.

That's what I usually do using reg.exe (even though it's not the "official" way).

 

REG LOAD HKLM\_DefaultUser %SystemDrive%\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT

REG ADD HKLM\_DefaultUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v DisableThumbnailCache /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD HKLM\_DefaultUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v LaunchTo /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD HKLM\_DefaultUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v SearchboxTaskbarMode /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG DELETE HKLM\_DefaultUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v OneDriveSetup /f

:: etc

REG UNLOAD HKLM\_DefaultUser

 

At least it keeps the profile small and every change you make is also documented.

[KevinB]

Having wasted many days trying to make them work, we gave up on trying to get the Start menu and Start Screen working reliably using normal roaming profiles and switched over to using UEV on the advice of our LA support. I was a little wary of it as being something else new, and which may break things further, but I have to say it's a success. It's a bit fiddly until you get used to creating and then editing your templates but once it's set up it works flawlessly. We now have a fully customised start menu and a semi-locked down start layout and they both work reliably:

 

 

Edit to add: It's also important to make sure you're using a 1607 or later based build like LTSB 2016, not a 1511 based build like LTSB 2015, which blows many, many chunks if you try this.

Edited February 8, 2017 by KevinB

[mtillbrook]

If it is just the start menu you are trying to play with, have you considered this: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/itpro/windows/manage/customize-and-export-start-layout

 

I know there are loads of people out there that do use and do like mandatory profiles but these days, with group policies etc, you don't need to rely on such an old technique - you can do everything with GPO's!