YOU'RE NOT YOUR FUCKING KHAKIS
Here are a few examples of how to pin items to the Classic Shell Start Menu using Group Policy Preferences and as always navigate to here inside of Group Policy Management:
User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Shortcuts Right-click Shortcuts > New > Shortcut
To add the Windows Calculator to the Start Menu…
Continue reading “Classic Shell – Pin Items to the Classic Start Menu via Group Policy”
When applying the Classic Shell Group Policy Templates in Windows 2012 RDS, there is an option called “Menu items for the Windows 7 Style”. In order to customize the menu items, you first need to make changes to some user profile that is using Classic Shell and then go and retrieve the entries from the HKCU\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings\MenuItems7 key in the Registry to know what to enter there. Even on the Classic Shell forums, they didn’t have it documented so here goes…
First, you should have a list of entries titled “Items(1-23).Command=” followed by the friendly name of the item.
Item1.Command=user_files
Following each one of those entires, you may or may not have an additional entry for each item titled “Items(1-23).Settings=” followed by one or more of the display options depending on how you want it displayed.
Item1.Settings=NOEXPAND
As of Classic Shell version 4.1, here is a list of the Command names and their descriptions:
admin - %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools Continue reading "Classic Shell – Registry Entries for Custom Windows 7 Style Start Menu"
Classic Shell is a necessary evil for any normal Windows user who wants to be able remain productive with introduction of the Start Screen in Server 2012 and Windows 8. As a network administrator, I highly recommend Classic Shell because it even has it’s own Group Policy templates that you can add in with the PolicyDefinitions inside your domain’s SYSVOL folder so you can at least somewhat try to put the Start Menu back to the way it once was. The Start Screen is a technical support person’s worst nightmare for novice users who don’t deal well with change (and trust me they don’t).
If you’re trying to customize a Remote Desktop Server environment, one somewhat annoying thing you will run into is trying to get rid of the first run wizard for Classic Shell. Obviously, the first run wizard is handy for anybody who wants to customize the look and feel of their Start Menu, but more than likely in a Remote Desktop environment, you’re going to want all this predefined with no user interaction so the chances of them screwing things up is slim to none.
Continue reading “Classic Shell – Remove First Run Wizard with Group Policy”