Windows 10: Where Start menu pinned items info is stored?

hi!

i have had BSOD and my entire start menu pinned items are gone.
and i had LOTS of them (almost entire extended start menu filled) all sorted and adjusted. too long to recover manually.

i have system partition backup image. but it would be stupid to recover whole system cuz of start menu (lots of changes will be lost too)
so i need to find a way to export those settings from mounted back up and import them to main system (i know how to mount registry hive also, in case it is needed).

i know there are export-startlayout and import-startlayout commands for powershell so i was thinking about making virtual machine out of backup. but after some reading it looks too complicated. too bad i didn't know about export-startlayout earlier lol.

so, maybe someone know where these settings are stored?

:)

 

undoing pinned start folder

Right clicking a folder or drive in file explorer gives the option of pinning it to the start menu. Did that with a mapped drive where I keep photos. Now I have all the photos and subfolders pinned to my start menu. Other than unpinning item by item,
is there a way to undo the whole thing or, alternately, how can multiple items be selected in the start menu so that multiples could be unpinned at once?

 

How does one create shortcuts to start applications?

Right-click a pinned item in the Start menu, click "More", "Open File location".

This opens the Start menu\Programs folder where you can assign shortcut key for each .lnk file.

 

Your Start menu pinned items are in "%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu"

I suspect that the problem you are experiencing has wiped the entries from this folder. So knowing the location can only help you prepare for future failures by backing up the location whenever you make changes to it.

Denis

 

that's not correct. as i understand it was a case in previous windows versions, but i am on 10th.
i've seen this path in some guides/articles which were concerning, for example, window 7.
right now, after pinning some shortcuts to start, i can't see it is reflected in said folder and rightfully so, shortcuts that are pinned are actually lying all over c:\users dir. they may belong to user, to default user, may be located in documents folder or appdata folder and so on.

pinning a shortcut means just adding it to some metadata structure, the shortcut itself is not relocated or copied ('m pretty sure). rather, some data is written, i suppose, to the registry, containing the location of actual shortcut on disk and size and position of tile.

nope, again =)
as i've said, i have full system partition backup. i just can't understand how to retrieve start menu tiles data from it without loading into it and using PowerShell command export-startlayout

thanks for your concern anyway =)

 

You are correct. My notes on the subject are from August 2015 [they are in my Windows 10 folders not my Windows 7 folders] so things must have changed. My test notes include copies of shortcuts I used as test files for this so I must actually have done it rather than just thought it but, having recently reinstalled Windows 10, the folder I said you should look at no longer exists on my computer.

Some, but not all, user pinned shortcuts appear in %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
I have not been able to find those that do not appear here. I included checking the Registry.

Denis