Pin to Start Menu – Alternative Way

At the end of March, I’ve published a way to Pin to Start Menu the shortcuts you wanted.

Then after some testing and research I’ve found out the this could be a real pain to make this configuration to all users.

So…I’ve managed to find/get an alternative way to do this using the good old Default User + Registry.

To do this you’ll need to:

.: On a reference machine configure all your pinned shortcuts

.: Then go to registry:[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage]

.: Export the reg key to a file and just the the keys:
  :: FavoritesResolve
  :: Favorites
  :: FavoritesChanges

.: Now using for example a vbscript you need to load the default user hive to “inject” your registry file.

Here’s an example on how to do this:

‘Pin Icons to Start Menu            
Wshshell.run "REG LOAD HKLM\TMP C:\Users\Default\ntuser.dat" 
WScript.Sleep 2000 
WshShell.run "REGEDIT /S C:\exportedregfile.reg" 
WScript.Sleep 2000   
Wshshell.run "REG UNLOAD HKLM\TMP"

And this will do the trick!

Vista – Add to Favorites – Unspecified Error

Yesterday I’ve installed a fresh copy of Windows Vista (with SP1 by the way…) and like before I’ve moved my Favorites folder to a new location. Like before I got an error when trying to add new bookmarks to my favorites folder. I don’t know yet if this problem occurs when you don’t move the favorites folder to some place else.

Normally the error says something like “Cannot add ‘xxxxxx’. Unspecified Error”.

So, here it’s the solution for this issue:

- Open command prompt with elevated privileges (runas administrator)

- Navigate to the level where your favorites folder is.

- Execute this command line: icacls favorites /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low

Problem solved!