I have a very simple question, that I think must be related to this Controlled Folder Access issue. How do I simply copy my Desktop folder to another location? Win10 won't give me access to making a copy!
Hi, Tomcat. You've helped me in the past as well--thanks!
It looks like what you are suggesting is that I simply go to the desktop and select all the files and shortcuts I want to copy, and then copy them to my selected folder. Well, Duh! I should have thought of that. Easy enough.
What I want to do is re-install Windows, but I want a copy of what is in certain system folders in my current setup, so I can see what I need to replace and reinstall.
Okay, that was fairly simple, with the Desktop.... But I'd also like to make a copy of my Start Menu. Do you have any thoughts about how I can do that? Oh, for the days of Windows XP, when all this was simple.
Michael
There are many posts/articles about that, but all essentially the same. Just a matter of copying the right data off somewhere, then putting it back. Take a look at this. It's the first one that popped up on a Google search. Others say the same thing. It's the data in your Appdata/Start Menu....
https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/c...her-22289.html
Brink (as always) has a tutorial for this. It will back up the tiles and their layout as well as the All apps list..
Backup and Restore Start Layout in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials
Terrific Bree, I'll take a look at that. I was thinking I could always resort to making a bunch of snips, but this sounds a lot better.
Thanks to both of you.
Michael
You know, that is a great export and inport process that Brink created for the Start Menu; however, what I was looking for was a way to get a simple text file of what is on the Program list. All I want to do is have a way of checking what I had installed before vs. what the new Win10 install has, and decide which programs I actually want to reinstall. So, this is a different purpose. Any thoughts on that? I'll also ask on that thread, but I may be going back to my tedious series of snips of the start menu to get what I want.
For the 'All users' list, from a command prompt type....
dir "C:\programdata\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" /s > %userprofile%\desktop\Start-menu-list.txt
NB: If you have Controlled Folder Access turned on you will be blocked from writing to the desktop. Either turn it off temporarily, or use...
dir "C:\programdata\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" /s > %userprofile%\Start-menu-list.txt
...which writes to the the top level of your user folder which is not a protected folder.
If you have any links in your personal start menu, you may also want to use...
dir "%appdata%\Microsoft\windows\Start menu\programs" /s > %userprofile%\desktop\Personal-start-menu.txt
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