Hey mister, thank you for solving this issue for me, I should have kept track of the change I evidently made using the Policy Editor. Perhaps I fiddled with those settings in a desperate attemp to get rid of the Store icon. I'm sorry for wasting so much of your time.
The only thing I remember is that I was trying to unpin the Store icon and the damn thing kept coming back every time I powered up the computer, I must have messed with the Policy Editor before finding your script that finally killed the link but evidently I forgot what I did before. Thanks again.
Hey,
For some reason, the regedit directory and the %appdata% directory you provided both do not exist. Every time I unpin taskbar programs the reappear on restart/login. I have been trying to figure out what the issue is for about 30 minutes and cannot figure out how or why this is happening
Hello nullslwx, and welcome to Ten Forums.
Go ahead and post screenshots showing these two locations on your computer to see if anything may stand out.
Be sure to copy and paste the locations into the address bar of File Explorer and Registry Editor, and press Enter to open it.
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Hello. The "Pin to taskbar" context menu item is for shortcuts (.lnk files), and not for executable (.exe files).
If you try to right clic on shortcut (.lnk file), you will see the "Pin to taskbar" option in context menu.
Regards!
Hello. The "Pin to taskbar" context menu item is for shortcuts (.lnk files), and not for executable (.exe files).
If you try to right clic on shortcut (.lnk file), you will see the "Pin to taskbar" option in context menu.
Regards!
So rarely does a suggested fix work because of the complications of my personal setup, but THIS one did!! I am thrilled and delighted and relieved not to have my working space suddenly obscured by large intrusive pop up not to mention showing me news that is unwelcome and insidious. Phew.
I have a similar but not exactly identical situation. I have a script that runs when a new user is created that sets a default configuration. I crafted a LayoutModification.xml file that sets the default start menu and taskbar icons, and the script places it in each new user's profile. The <DefaultLayoutOverride> part works correctly - it prepopulates the start menu with tiles for the installed apps and the user can add, move and delete tiles if desired. The user's changes persist after a reboot.
The <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection PinListPlacement="Replace"> section has a problem: It populates the taskbar with the default apps (Explorer, Firefox, Thunderbird, Calculator, Word, Excel and Powerpoint), but if the user deletes any of these default icons from the taskbar, they return every time Explorer starts. New pins persist, but unpins don't. I have at least 2 users who mainly use their computer to play games, and they don't want Excel or Powerpoint permanently pinned to the taskbar.
There used to be a way to pin or unpin taskbar items with a Powershell script, but one of the 2019 major updates disabled this ability because Micro$oft didn't want rogue apps (viruses) to be able to automatically pin things to the taskbar.
The only solution I've been able to come up with is to remove everything except Explorer and Firefox from the <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection ...> section of LayoutModification.xml and leave it to the user to add whatever he wants.
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