Start menu tiles layout savefile?

Hello tin Welcome to the Ten Forums!

I hate to say this but.... There isn't actually any configuration file to find. You have the option to pin or unpin items to the Start tile area as you would on the main task bar. When going to make a few changes perhaps a slight pictorial at how to do things can help here!



As always it looks a little clumsy with all the tiles that come pre-pinned and you would rather rearrange and possibly even resize things along with putting them into separate categories?! Have a look at how that would look instead of the first mess seen there.



A slight change of appearance wouldn't you say? And how is that done? First the Start tile area can be clicked and dragged to an extent in order to see that resized by clicking on and holding an edge either horizontal or vertical. First you may want to resize things like the tiles themselves if you are not looking to take up the entire screen.



Some like Edge will see the options for Large and Wide and when using Small things can be packed in rather tightly.



You will also notice that the entire area has been reshaped as mentioned before by clicking and grabbing the edge as seen in the lower right corner for vertical there. So we went from this....



to this in a matter of minutes!



And for something different from the default Windows automatically adjusts all we can change a few other things as well. How about the background? Transparent or Solid color or theme you choose or create?



For something like that or for the option of manually choosing a color for both taskbar and Start menu you have to turn something off in the Start>Settings>Personalization dept.



All this is done manually each time you run across the default tiles if you should happen to see any upgrade to repair install or reset action to bring 10 back to Square #1. Desktop themes and such are not stored in the same fashion seen in previous versions.

Since everything is controlled through the System Registry the best action would be making a backup for that in order to preserve the present configurations of things. But after each clean install you would need to take the same steps at manually getting things set the way you want them. Stuff has to be unpinned and pinned manually as you go along! That's unavoidable.

Not exactly! In fact I have never even heard of any particular file you can back to preserve anything with any Start menu. That's always been a program installer's option or something you dragged into the Startup folder on previous versions. I didn't get much to spend with 10 prior to only seeing a fast VM early on for Tech Preview build and ended up right in the middle of the 10240 RTM back in July still trying to learn the ropes of the latest version here.

I know upon the first system restart the arrangement and sizes for each tile is preserved by something in Windows as you would see with other settings and custom configs. If someone else has an answer for this they can jump in here with it since it would be interesting to see how that works.

Creating System Restore points manually as you typically see done when trying out some new program would be one option to reset things back to the present if a problem should come up later. You can download one of the Shortcuts for this. System Restore Point shortcut - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

That will save a step of following the general manual option used for seeing restore points created in the other guide seen at System Restore Point - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums[1]=Backup%20Restore

Individual items however may still end up being changed or lost during a mishap of some type. The restore points simply bring the system registry itself back to the present state it is in now or when the point is created. The first guide points to three separate shortcuts available when looking those over.

Sounds like the best option is to back up the entire user account including all sub folders as far as having a disaster plan. I wasn't running either 8 or 8.1 prior to seeing 10 and 7 lacked any tiles! And without the programs on if a clean install or Reset has to be seen to you still wouldn't be able to restore that until each and every one that had a tile was back on again. Better off restoring a full system image! That will keep everything intact.