We recently rolled out Windows 11 to newly purchased laptops and the helpdesk requested some of the useful applications be pinned to the start menu for better end user visibility. Easy task I thought!
Microsoft’s documentation is conflicting (as per) and took a while to find a solution that actually worked in my environment so thought I would post what ended up working me.
At time of posting Microsoft’s start menu GPO expects an .xml but on Windows 11, the start menu is configured using .json. Ignore both and push the following with SCCM/Intune
Configure your start menu and copy the start menu’s backup file “start2.bin” located in:
%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState
This file needs to be present in the Default profile to be used for start menus in future user profiles. Deploy a package after the installation of the OS with your start2.bin and a simple powershell script to
- Create the directory in the default profile
- Copy the start2.bin file
- Result
$loc= "C:\users\Default\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.StartMenuExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState"
New-Item -Path $loc -ItemType Directory -Force
Copy-Item -Path .\start2.bin -Destination $locVerify the “LocalState” folder has been created in the Default profile and “start2.bin” has been copied
Hey presto – on all future logins your saved start menu will be used and the end user can change it (unlike the taskbar xml for windows 10)
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