Hi,

I am trying to create a default user profile for a Windows 8.1 Pro x64 image. I have everything down except for the Start Screen. After sysprep moves the administrator's profile over to the default it generalizes the Start Screen, despite my customizations. Before sysprep, I exported the Start Screen layout via Powershell and saved it to a local directory on the computer. Using the local GPO, I assign the exported Start Screen XML file as the default under both the user's and the computer's context. Those settings didn't take effect. I rebooted the computer and logged into Windows an account that did not have a pre-existing profile on that computer and still got a generalized (i.e. useless) Start Screen. I can't test this under a domain GPO, because our domain hasn't updated the DCs to take advantage of new GPO settings (they're still running Windows Server 2008 R2). I suspect those settings wouldn't work anyway. I went into the default user profile and replaced the Start Screen BIN with my customized BIN, which was exported via Powershell. That did work either. A reboot and logon by a new user still had them getting the generalized Start Screen. I read in Microsoft's documentation that Windows 8.1 Enterprise can only have a custom-default Start Screen, not 8.1 Pro. Is that true? Surely there has to be a way to customize this for everyone on Windows 8.1 Pro. I can't be the only one who has a need to do this.

Thanks in a

Hi,

According to the description from following library:

Start screen control is not supported in the Windows 8.1 Pro operating system and the Windows 8.1 operating system.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn467928.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

That's really stupid. I got lucky and was able to get my custom Start Screen deployed as part of the copy profile task in the unattend.xml file. 

Thanks