Category: MDT / WDS

Issues Deploying a Custom Windows 10 Start Menu Layout when using an image with a Default Profile

John 4 Comments

So I’m in the final stages of getting our Windows 10 Deployment ready to go and I am currently in the process of branding and customising our image, which includes setting a custom Start Menu Tile Layout.  This is done with the use of two PowerShell commands Export-StartMenuLayout and Import-StartMenuLayout.

I created our preferred start menu, exported on my test computer and then added a Task to our MDT Deployment Task Sequence.

I found that this completed without any errors but Windows was not applying the Start Menu, after a bit of digging around, I found an issue where if you have CopyProfile set to true in your unattend xml answer file then there is another step that you need to complete which is to delete the TileDataLayer folder located in C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local and once I added that line to my batch file the Start Menu appeared.  My complete batch file is as follows;

powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Copy-Item '%~dp0StartMenu.xml' -destination C:\Windows\Temp; Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath C:\Windows\Temp\StartMenu.xml -MountPath $env:SystemDrive\; Remove-Item C:\Windows\temp\StartMenu.xml -Force"
rmdir C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer /q /s

Hope that helps.

How to remove the Open File Security Warning Prompt during Driver Deployment or User Login when using MDT or SCCM

John Leave a comment

Security Warning with DriversDuring a deployment of Windows or even after Windows is deployed you see an Open File – Security Warning prompt when a .EXE runs (similar to the one on the right).

This happens because when you download an .EXE, .ZIP, or .CAB Internet Explorer (as well as Firefox and Chrome) saves what is called a Zone Identifier, telling the Operating System the file came from the internet and not a trusted zone.  In certain deployments this can happen several times when a user logs in to load all of the applications into the system tray, some of them being igfxtray.exe, apmsgfwd.exe, apntex.exe, apoint.exe, gfxui.exe, hidfind.exe, hkcmd.exe, igfxpers.exe.

To get around this we need to remove the ZoneIdentifier, we can use a small utility from SysInternals to do it.  Download Streams, copy it to your MDT or SCCM Server and run the following changing the path to a location containing your drivers;

streams.exe -s -d "E:\MDTDeploymentShare\Out-Of-Box Drivers"

Make sure you run that in an Administrative command prompt and accept the license agreement on the first run. Hope that helps.