[24h2 / lts 2024] Plea for help with some Windows 11 management links

[Hoyt]

Howdy all,

 

As I had mentioned before I am looking at ways to locally enforce either a blank start menu on our Windows 11 Education clients like we have with Windows 10 or redirect one somehow. The main thing holding us back is the pinned items. We have the Microsoft Store disabled in our GPO but of course Windows 11 is just ignoring that setting. Another pin that would cause us no end of grief is the Outlook (new) and Microsoft 365 (Office). Like a lot of U.S. school systems we have sold our soul to Google and MUST use the Chrome browser and Gmail. No exceptions (even our filtering system requires Chrome). The settings gear is OK to leave because it at least won't open up due to the GPO.

 

As I had mentioned before we have a very small staff with no outside help we can contact. We don't even have a community college in our county we could bounce things off off so to speak. I want to kick things off with 24H2 so we don't have to worry about a major update in the near future. What we really need is the ability to lock these few remaining pins out locally, but I want to be able to remove the entire pinned section if possible. Even if we had the money to get rolling with Microsoft's "Intune" online management system (which we don't) we really don't have the spare staff to assign to the task.

 

I was wondering if any of y'all knew of any links you would be willing to share of sites that deal with this sort of thing. Funny thing is I tracked down a post at the Microsoft Learn College dealing with redirecting the Start Menu of Windows 11 and the Microsoft employee listed the procedure for Windows 10 which does not work with Windows 11. I realize that Microsoft is currently being run by children that were never spanked but I was hoping someone might know an adult that was still in the room.

 

Thanks for any and all replies.

[ZeroHour]

I am not sure how useful these scripts might be for login purposes but it may give some ideas as they are not so much to lock down but set the start menu and are primarily aimed at InTune deployment although they might be useful with GP.

 

https://www.everything365.online/2024/07/07/deploy-a-customized-windows-11-taskbar-that-allows-users-to-change-the-pinned-apps-revised-version/

 

https://github.com/mtniehaus/AutopilotBranding/blob/main/AutopilotBranding/AutopilotBranding.ps1

[Hoyt]

I am not sure how useful these scripts might be for login purposes but it may give some ideas as they are not so much to lock down but set the start menu and are primarily aimed at InTune deployment although they might be useful with GP.

 

https://www.everything365.online/2024/07/07/deploy-a-customized-windows-11-taskbar-that-allows-users-to-change-the-pinned-apps-revised-version/

 

https://github.com/mtniehaus/AutopilotBranding/blob/main/AutopilotBranding/AutopilotBranding.ps1

 

Thanks for the prompt reply ZH. That first link is sort of what I was hoping for but is related to the pinned items on the TaskBar, which seems to be easier to do locally (not with Intune) than the actual Start Menu itself. We actually clear off the taskbar completely now with GP since we have redirected Desktop shortcuts.

 

I appreciate everyone's time. I'm picking up little pieces here and there that if nothing else gives me a better understanding of what is going on.