It’s been a long while since I last posted about how to customise the Windows 10 Start Menu and Taskbar for new users when deploying images, so it’s time to fix that! The first thing we need to do is setup what we want our Start Menu to look like and export it. Log on to a Windows 10 machine that has all of the software you want to be pinned on the Start Menu layout and customise the Start Menu as you want it.

I have recently published a video walkthrough covering how to use Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to create customised standalone install image of Windows 10. It is directed towards enthusiasts, IT professional’s for small businesses, or anyone who wants to create custom images and doesn’t have access to volume licensing, an Active Directory domain, or a lot of server infrastructure. If you are familiar with my previous articles on MDT then this follows a similar method; except its focused on Windows 10 Home and Professional editions, using the Media Creation Tool to obtain Windows 10, customising the image and then creating an ISO to deploy Windows 10 standalone with additional software.

This article is directed towards enthusiasts, IT professional’s for small businesses, or anyone who wants to create custom images and doesn’t have volume licensing, an Active Directory domain, or a lot of server infrastructure. I have also recently published a video walkthrough covering this to my YouTube channel. I hope this article is useful to you, if it is please consider supporting my work by checking out my Patreon, or by donating with PayPal, or Ko-fi.

If you’ve read my other posts you’ll know that usually I make a post focusing on building a reference image and then another post on deploying that image. This post is very similar but I’m going to streamline things by just covering the installation of MDT, and deploying Windows 10 1909. I have also recently published a video walkthrough covering this to my YouTube channel. What you’ll need: A server to host the MDT share.

I’ve made a video walkthrough covering installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and deploying Windows 10. The video follows my previous posts on the subject, but I’ve added some additional useful information to cover silent application installation and I also touch on driver management. I intend to write a post that covers the same subjects as this video, just to bring all the information together in written form. If you find the video useful I would very much appreciate it being shared around, and don’t forget to like etc.

I’ve avoided posting about this for a while mostly because I thought Windows Photo Viewer would get removed. But it’s still there in Windows 10 1909 and it’s still good - even though it doesn’t play animated GIFs and hasn’t been updated since the time of Windows 7. Here’s how to enable it in Windows 10. Enable Windows Photo Viewer To enable Windows Photo Viewer so it shows up as an option to open image file types with, copy and paste the text below as is into a new text file and save it with a “.

2019-11-12: Microsoft have confirmed on Twitter that there will be no updated ADK for Windows 10 1909, so keep using ADK 1903 with the fix as noted below. 2019-10-24: At the time of writing there is no ADK for Windows 10 1909 November 2019 Update (19H2), so I’ve tested this walkthrough using the ADK for Windows 10 1903 with the hotfix for Windows System Image Manager. I’ll keep these pages up to date when Windows 10 1909 is officially released.

2019-11-12: Microsoft have confirmed on Twitter that there will be no updated ADK for Windows 10 1909, so keep using ADK 1903 with the fix as noted below. 2019-10-05: At the time of writing there is no ADK for Windows 10 1909 November 2019 Update (19H2), so I’ve tested this walkthrough using the ADK for Windows 10 1903 with the hotfix for Windows System Image Manager. I’ll keep these pages up to date when Windows 10 1909 is officially released.

2019-11-12: Microsoft have confirmed on Twitter that there will be no updated ADK for Windows 10 1909, so keep using ADK 1903 with the fix as noted below. 2019-10-05: At the time of writing there is no ADK for Windows 10 1909 November 2019 Update (19H2), so I’ve tested this walkthrough using the ADK for Windows 10 1903 with the hotfix for Windows System Image Manager. I’ll keep these pages up to date when Windows 10 1909 is officially released.

Here’s a couple of helpful tips and tricks I’ve found from Windows 10 1909/1903 and previous versions. Let’s get into them! Search and Cortana Are Separated In 1903/1909 A good change IMO and my first impressions of the new search is that it’s back to being as good as Windows 7’s. The search bar on the Taskbar is now just search and has nothing to do with Cortana. By default the search bar is expanded on the Taskbar and Cortana is just an icon.

Page History Update 2021-11-22: Added information relating to Windows 10 21H2. Update 2021-09-03: Added information relating to Windows 11 21H2. Update 2021-05-12: Added information relating to Windows 10 21H1 May 2021 Update. Update 2020-11-02: Added information relating to Windows 10 20H2 October 2020 Update. Update 2020-06-12: Added information relating to Windows 10 2004 May 2020 Update (20H1). Update 2020-01-27: Removed information for old unsupported versions of Win 10 and added a table to show which app maps to the display names in PowerShell.

This week I’ve gone pretty deep down the rabbit hole of automating the Start Menu and Taskbar layouts during an MDT Task Sequence. Update 2017-05-02: This also works with Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) As every device I’m deploying will have the same customisation I wanted to automate it during the build or deploy Task Sequence, rather than applying it via domain Group Policy to reduce limited network bandwidth, keep Group Policy as light as possible and reduce login times as much as possible.

Update 2017-05-02: I’ll attempt to keep this up to date as new versions of Windows come out. This might seem like an odd topic to cover, but I’ve receive quite a few questions about this in recent months. Due to Windows 10 being developed constantly and on a rapid release schedule, it’s important to differentiate between the various major updates. Even though Windows 10 Anniversary Update (1607) seems very similar to what would have been called Windows 10 RTM in the past, there are some big changes, and keeping track of each major update can be tricky when traditionally IT Pro’s are used to a new version of Windows every few years rather than every few months.