Windows 10 tiles on start menu removed for all new users

Question

I am making a new Image for a company and they requested a Windows 10 start menu with no tiles. I have removed the tiles on the default Account and created a start menu layout xml file with 0 tiles on it. I than created a new user to test the changes and there are 2 columns of tiles only on the new user. These tiles are headed by the text life at a glance and play and explore. When you right click them there is no option to unpin tiles and they all appear to be live tiles. has anyone else run into this issue and if so know of a fix that is not install this 3rd party program or revert it to the classic menu?

Answer 1

I have seen the behavior you describe in one situation: where the layout had been applied as a (Locked) Start Layout in Group Policy. Is there any chance this had been attempted by that company before?

Check
User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar -> Prevent users from customizing their Start Screen
and
User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar -> Start Layout
Or check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer for LockedStartLayout and StartLayoutFile entries. (And maybe also the same path but HKEY_CURRENT_USER for the Default user.)

I'm curious what your xml looks like and what command you used to apply it. Here's mine, VERY minimal. (I later added Taskbar customization too, but you didn't ask about that.)

<LayoutModificationTemplate xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout" xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout" Version="1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification">
  <LayoutOptions StartTileGroupCellWidth="6" />
  <DefaultLayoutOverride>
    <StartLayoutCollection>
      <defaultlayout:StartLayout GroupCellWidth="6" />
    </StartLayoutCollection>
  </DefaultLayoutOverride>
</LayoutModificationTemplate>

and Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath "C:\Temp\LayoutFile.xml" -MountPath C:\
worked for me.

This answer was also very interesting for testing local changes instead of having to logoff/logon. Hope you find it as useful as I did.