1709 Start Menu Layout

[DannyG555]

Hi all,

 

Been battling trying to get the start menu layout working (I have read many of you who have battled this in the past!). Just about got this working now but I have run in to an issue where I now want to enable the "Remove common program groups from Start Menu" in GPO to simplify it for it users. This then breaks the layout as shortcuts are based in %ALLUSERSPROFILE%. I have tried moving shortcuts on to a network share and then reference that in the layout XML, but alas no go

 

It would seem perhaps that you have to use the %APPDATA% and %ALLUSERSPROFILE% in the XML.... Is anyone able to confirm? Is there anyone who has managed to reference a shortcut that is stored on a network share instead?

[synaesthesia]

Do you redirect your start menu? I find that having the shortcuts referenced to allusersprofile works as long as the shortcuts are available in the redirected start menu location. I can double check later on.

[DannyG555]

Yes, I've been testing with redirecting the start menu. Been able to get this working together with the layout that uses the alluserprofile referencing. It just breaks when you then add the group policy to remove common program groups...

[mullet_man]

I just edit the XML to change the path of the shortcut to our redirected location

 

 

So thats a snipit of ours, it works fine.

[DannyG555]

Hmm. That's what I've been trying as below... starting to wonder if it may be a permissions issue then. mullet_man, Do you happen to know what user context would need access? i.e. the logged in user, system?

 

[mullet_man]

Hmm. That's what I've been trying as below... starting to wonder if it may be a permissions issue then. mullet_man, Do you happen to know what user context would need access? i.e. the logged in user, system?

 

 

I've got everyone set to read on the NTFS permissions

 

Maybe shorten your path a bit - seems a bit long which might be an issue.

 

I've found that if you've got an error anywhere in your shortcuts it totally messes up the whole start menu.

[dfergusson]

We had far more success by moving to using AppUserModelID or DesktopApplicationID

Unfortunately not all applications are listed under Appsfolder.

 

You can use Get-StartApps PowerShell command to get list of DesktopApplicationID address

 

Examples below