Configure boot to desktop instead of start screen

[ITguy87]

Good morning,

 

In my organization we are currently going to be rolling out a bunch of Surface Pro 3 tablets and one thing that was required of us to set was have the desktop pop up at login instead of the start screen. Currently I have an entry in a task sequence that will run this command which successfully does what I specified but it does it only for the account that it's currently logged in with at the time (in this case the local admin account).

reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage /v OpenAtLogon /f

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage /v OpenAtLogon /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Once you log in with a domain account, I have to go in there manually and set it by right-clicking the Taskbar --> Properties --> Navigation.

 

What I would like to know is if there's another registry key I can modify to have this option set across the board or if there's another way to do this altogether (i.e., Group Policy). If Group Policy can do this on W2K8R2, please let me know so that I can test.

 

Thanks in advance.

[anyweb]

you need to set the value for the default user account before any user logs on, that way all new user accounts created have the desired value, like so..where %OSDISK% is the drive with windows on... you can either create a script or run as a run command line step at the end of the task sequence

reg load HKU\Default %OSDisk%\Users\Default\ntuser.dat

reg add HKU\Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage /v OpenAtLogon /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

reg unload HKU\Default

or via group policy,

 

Boot to Desktop using Group Policy

• Open Group Policy Management Console
• Right-Click on your Windows 8.1 Users Group Policy and select "Edit"
• Navigate to the following section: User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar
• Locate the following setting: "Go to the desktop instead of Start when signing in or when all the apps on a screen are closed" (yes – it’s really called that)
• Enable the setting

[ITguy87]

I opened up my GPMC and created a new policy but I'm not seeing this particular entry in there. Could it be that since it's W2K8R2 it doesn't have this feature included?

[ITguy87]

Nevermind. I was missing the latest and greatest ADML and ADMX files for Windows 8, 8.1 and Server 2012. I'm currently testing this out.