Windows 10: Windows apps, Start layout and taskbar pinned apps problem in mandatory profile

Hi,I customized my profile and set up a mandatory profile following this guide. According to the guide, a customized Taskbar and Start Layout don’t work properly in Windows 11 with a mandatory profile. While I’d love a workaround to ensure a consistent user experience, my main issue is that some apps, like Calculator, are removed from the mandatory profile as soon as I rename the ntuser.dat to ntuser.man.In the mandatory profile, the Taskbar and Start menu only display Edge, File Explorer, and the Settings app, which doesn’t seem right. I’ve tried modifying the registry and applying every pos

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Query re pinning and unpinning apps to taskbar

Pinning an app to taskbar does not remove it from Start all apps list. It list in Start under letter M as in Microsoft Edge, you should find it there even when it is pinned to taskbar.

 

Mandatory Profile (.v5)


Hi
Has anyone successfully got mandatory profiles working with Windows 10 (currently running Win10 Enterprise 1511).

Essentially, I have it 99% of the way there, but whilst the start bar is clickable (which it previously wasn't), it now shows a blank start menu - ignoring either the Mandatory Profile Start Menu, or the XML Start Menu imported via Group Policy.

My steps are based on having a dedicated "mandatory" local account to do all user customisations before copying it up to the netlogon share rather than using the default profile - which works fine but has none of our app customizations built in - unless I start look at importing reg keys etc;

So here are my steps;

Login to the gold image machine as .\mandatory
1. Open Regedit
2. Right Click on HKCU and give the following full permissions – logging in as a domain admin first
a. Everyone
b. All Application Pools
c. Authenticated Users
4. Close Regedit
This is essentially instead of doing it via loading the hive - which seems to really help the start menu (I think)

5. Reboot the machine
6. Login as domain administrator – run Windows Enabler
7. Copy the profile to \\%domaincontroller%\netlogon\profiles\.v5 with everyone as permissions
8. Change a user to use that as their profile
9. Reboot the computer (giving AD enough time to replicate)
10. Login as that user
11. Start Menu is clickable and edge works on the task bar

However!.

It does not pull in the start menu xml that we have configured, nor the start menu contained within the mandatory profile, but the start menu is fully clickable!

I think other ways I have read on mandatory profiles about loading the hive from another machine didn't work because the DeviceAccess registry key seems to be permanantley locked even if I give everyone full permission - if I do it locally and then export the full mandatory profile it works.

In anticipation

John Paul

 

Windows 7 BETA Problem/Bug Report

Had tons of problems with this then I did a reinstall and most of my problems went away and the only things left are customization gripes.

1) cant customize WMP as I like
2) cant customize wallpaper as I like natively in windows...I know there are plenty of 3rd party apps, but why have the customization just one or two steps away from being a legitimate alternative to 3rd party apps
3) The instant you pin something to the taskbar it leaves the start menu...
4) Somethings cannot be pinned to the taskbar i.e. anything in the control panel
5) cant turn off the UAC without the desktop apps going away... you CAN install the actual sidebar to circumvent this but what the hell was the point of dropping the sidebar? And isnt it strange to correlate the apps to the UAC?