Third post in my series. Make sure you read Win10: Start Menu Cleanup using DefaultLayouts.xml and Win10: Start Menu Customizing using DefaultLayouts.xml first.
I’m not going to rehash on how to use PowerShell to export a LayoutModification.xml, but how you can make your own. For starters, read Microsoft’s Start layout for Windows 10 desktop editions
When installing Office 2016, it adds Shortcuts to ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Hopefully you have read my first post on DefaultLayouts.xml, and are here to continue the process. When I left things, my Start Menu looked like this:
After removing unnecessary Appx Packages, my Start Menu is looking rather barren.
Most people discuss managing the Windows 10 Start Menu using the PowerShell Export-StartLayout
Customize and export Start layout
Windows 10 : Deploying a customized start menu
Step-By-Step: Windows 10 Start Menu Customization via PowerShell
Deploy the Windows 10 Start menu layout with Group Policy
Customizing the Windows 10 Start Menu and add IE Shortcut during OSD
Pinning Internet Explorer to Start Menu with LayoutModification.xml file
While there is nothing wrong with using this method, I think you only see half the picture using LayoutModification.xml
Spend a few minutes having a look at these links and then come back to see how to modify the Default Layout.
Manage Windows 10 Start layout options
Customize the Windows 10 Start screen
Start layout for Windows 10 desktop editions
I’m going to spend my next few posts discussing Windows 10 Start and related stuff.
When deploying Windows 10 1511 (confirmed in Pro and Enterprise Editions), the default Start (Menu / Screen / Page) gets configured with some odd tiles. Funny thing is that Windows 10 1511 includes a new feature called “Microsoft Consumer Experiences”. The great Michael Niehaus has a writeup on how to turn them off. This post won’t tell you anything different, but what I will do is explain what happens.
Apparently I didn’t take a close enough look at the colors from yesterday’s posts with an eyedropper, so I am expanding on how the Colorization works in a little more detail, with a little more headache.
When customizing your Corporate Theme, you will want to pick a Colorization Color. You can pick your Colorization Color in Personalization. The easiest way to get there is to right click on your Desktop and then Personalize.
From there you can select Colors. For this post I will be focused on the first color which is Yellow.
So you made it this far, now let’s see what damage we can do by changing Aero.theme
Some settings for Login and Wallpaper are actually part of the Windows Theme which is located at C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\aero.theme. By default you should have a Windows Theme in Control Panel > Personalization
The Logon Screen is where a user enters their credentials. By default the Windows Hero background is displayed. This is found in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows\img0.jpg
I’m going to spend some time detailing how to customize the Windows 10 Visual Experience in my next few posts, so I’ll start with showing the defaults for Windows 10 Enterprise.
When Windows starts, the Lock Screen is the first screen that is displayed.
You may find that OneDrive doesn’t work in Windows 10 after building a Custom Image and using the <CopyProfile> entry in the Unattend.xml. I detailed how CopyProfile works in my last post
The problem with Windows 10 is Copy Profile seems to break OneDrive
To get to this point, the following steps were done:
David Segura 