Windows 10 start menus / desktop icons .. best practice ?

[MrWu]

Hi

 

I am rolling out windows 10 throughout my school soon and have searched the forums here, great powershell scripts to remove bloat etc.

 

Also looking into using 2019 LTSC with MDT.

 

I do have something I’m stuck on though, we use start menu redirection on windows 7 that doesn’t work that well with Win 10

 

What’s best practice with Win 10 to present a start menu with just the apps they need and not presented as A-Z apps in Win 10 ?

 

We just use local installed programs and no remote apps.

 

Thanks as always

[timbo343]

Use an XML layout for different groups of users.

 

What we did was to configure the start menu for students - export it, look over the code and use it for students. Then we did the same for staff which have pretty much the same icons on the start layout but have a could more like SIMS, Impero and our seating software.

[CHiLL]

This is how we do it:

 

Desktop icons - Staff and students are pointed to their respective redirected desktop held on a network share.

Start Menu - Staff and students are pointed to their respective redirected start menu, held on a network share.

Start Menu Tiles - Staff and students are configured with separate XML files to configure the tile layouts. (Note: These XML files can be an absolute bugger to get right)

[maark]

This is how we do it:

 

Desktop icons - Staff and students are pointed to their respective redirected desktop held on a network share.

Start Menu - Staff and students are pointed to their respective redirected start menu, held on a network share.

Start Menu Tiles - Staff and students are configured with separate XML files to configure the tile layouts. (Note: These XML files can be an absolute bugger to get right)

 

as above - beware if staff have roaming profiles the start menu may not come up on first logon and can cause problems if you upgrade to a newer version of windows 10

[bknaggs]

I'm still sticking with Classic Shell here on version 1803.

[Rob_D]

Normal redirected start menu and desktops here. We don't bother with the tiles.

 

The thing that caught us out with redirected start menus is they can only be one folder deep (unless this has changed since we installed).

[psydii]

Current Branch though never in a rush to jump to the next feature update until it is actually ready.

 

Desktop redirected to OneDrive (w/ Files on Demand)

Start Menu as it comes. Since early days of 7 taught people to search the start menu (just type the name of the thing!).

 

No roaming profiles because they don't work with OneDrive. (and I've used roaming profiles since W2K, so this was a big change).

[NickoTheSicko]

I have two powershell scripts which you could use? open powershell as administrator and copy the package removals then right click in power shell and it will do it all itself. Hope this helps!

Package_Removal2.txt

Package_Removal.txt

[MrWu]

I have two powershell scripts which you could use? open powershell as administrator and copy the package removals then right click in power shell and it will do it all itself. Hope this helps!

 

Thank you, have used your scripts and it works a treat.

 

One one of the scripts (think it was No 2, does that need to be run as a login script..I think its the one that re creates the app when a new user logs in?)

 

thanks !

[NickoTheSicko]

Thank you, have used your scripts and it works a treat.

 

One one of the scripts (think it was No 2, does that need to be run as a login script..I think its the one that re creates the app when a new user logs in?)

 

thanks !

 

No problem, happy to help yer it is a login script.

[smarties11]

For the appx package removals, I find it better to remove these from your reference WIM image that you are deploying via whatever deployment system. Doing it this way means you don't have to run the script on every computer. You only ever need to run it when you update the WIM, and when you deploy this WIM to a fresh computer the apps are already gone. The script I use is this one https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Removing-Built-in-apps-65dc387b. At the reference WIM stage, you can also provision apps you have downloaded from Windows Store for Business that you would like on all machines (e.g. Microsoft Scan app).

 

In terms of the Start Menu and desktop icons - we redirect both of these to a network share and then use a start layout xml for the tiles. However, I am looking at changing this moving forward as in my testing it is adding around 10-15s to the login times. I'm thinking of keeping them both local but using group policy preferences to add/remove shortcuts. The downside of this method is that I can't then see a way to maintain different start menus and desktops for staff and students.

Edited March 19, 2019 by smarties11