Question: How to deploy Windows 7 Taskbar Pinned Icons by Group Policy
Answer: Windows 7 taskbar pinned icons are stored in the following locations:
File System:
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
Registry:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband]
To deploy it, you can perform the following steps:
- Configure Pinned items on a Windows 7 system as a reference computer.
- Export Reigstry Key to pinned.reg file:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband] - And copy items in the “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar” to a shared folder.
Create a logon script to deploy the registry keys and copy the corresponding files.
More Information
If you want to pin items to the Start Menu, you may refer to the following script:
Pin Items to the Start Menu or Windows 7 Taskbar via Script
Desktop Guy's Blog 
One of the fine features of Windows 7 is Superbar. It lets you pin programs to the taskbar, similar to pinning programs to Start menu in earlier version of Windows 7.
nice article, we can also look at http://www.morgantechspace.com/2014/04/Pin-Program-to-Taskbar-via-Group-Policy.html
Wow, awesome blog layout! How long have you been blogging for?
you make blogging look easy. The overall look of
your website is great, as well as the content!
gcullen83 by what about group policy noop
The above didn’t work for me…
I ended up finding and adapting the below VBS script that gets kicked off on login. Replace File locations as needed. In order for this to work you have to have a .lnk file in the sOriginFolder location ( K:\example\example below ) to copy down to the C:\temp location to run.
‘Copy Quicklink to C:\temp
Dim sOriginFolder, sDestinationFolder, sFile, oFSO
Set oFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
sOriginFolder = “K:\example\example”
sDestinationFolder = “c:\temp\”
For Each sFile In oFSO.GetFolder(sOriginFolder).Files
If Not oFSO.FileExists(sDestinationFolder & “\” & oFSO.GetFileName(sFile)) Then
oFSO.GetFile(sFile).Copy sDestinationFolder & “\” & oFSO.GetFileName(sFile),True
End If
Next
‘Pin to Start Menu
Set objShell = CreateObject(“Shell.Application”)
Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(“C:\temp”)
Set objFolderItem = objFolder.ParseName(“Sharepoint.lnk”)
Set colVerbs = objFolderItem.Verbs
For Each objVerb in colVerbs
If Replace(objVerb.name, “&”, “”) = “Pin to Taskbar” Then objVerb.DoIt
next
‘Delete quick link in c:\temp
Set obj = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”) ‘Calls the File System Object
obj.DeleteFile(“C:\temp\Sharepoint.lnk”) ‘Deletes the file throught the DeleteFile function
————————————————————————————————————————–
While the above works great, if you have a mixed environment of any kind you will want to use the below script to determine the OS and then run the proper script based on said OS. The below script will determine what the system OS is and if Server 2003 do nothing and if Windows 7 run the above script to pin the .lnk file to the taskbar.
‘ Purpose VBScript to discover the operating system version
‘ Author Guy Thomas http://computerperformance.co.uk/
‘ ————————————————————–‘
Option Explicit
Dim objWMI, objItem, colItems
Dim strComputer, VerOS, VerBig, Ver9x, Version9x, OS, OSystem
‘ Here is where we interrogate the Operating System
‘ On Error Resume Next
‘ Get the computer name dot = this computer.
strComputer = “.”
‘ This is where WMI interrogates the operating system
Set objWMI = GetObject(“winmgmts:\\” & strComputer & “\root\cimv2”)
Set colItems = objWMI.ExecQuery(“Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem”,,48)
‘ Here we filter Version from the dozens of properties
For Each objItem in colItems
VerBig = Left(objItem.Version,3)
Next
‘ Spot VerBig variable in previous section
‘ Note the output variable is called OSystem
Select Case VerBig
case “6.1” OSystem = “Windows 7”
case “6.0” OSystem = “Vista”
Case “5.2” OSystem = “Windows 2003”
Case “5.1” OSystem = “XP”
Case “5.0” OSystem = “W2K”
Case “4.0” OSystem = “NT 4.0”
Case Else OSystem = “Unknown – probably Win 9x”
End Select
‘ Actual Branching section
If OSystem = “XP” Then
Wscript.Echo “Upgrade to Windows 7!”
Else If OSystem = “Windows 2003” Then
Wscript.Quit
Else If OSystem = “Windows 7” Then
Dim objShell
Set objShell = Wscript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
objShell.Run “K:\example\example\sharepoint_taskbar.vbs”
‘ Using Set is mandatory
Set objShell = Nothing
End If
End If
End If
WScript.Quit
‘ End of script
What’s up, after reading this remarkable piece of writing i am too cheerful to share my familiarity here with friends.
I don’t know VBS so trying to fill in the blanks on these scripts is proving problematic. What parts of the above script need to be changed to fit my environment?
Not sure what you’re trying to do. send more information.
Simply trying to pin items to taskbar (Microsoft Word, Excel, PPT, Outlook).
I will need to do this for all users that log into machine in domain environment.
The links that talk about creating VBS don’t give rookies enough info on what needs to be changed within the script to fit their environment.
I’ve read the two below but still can’t configure it out.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2009/04/08/pin-items-to-the-start-menu-or-windows-7-taskbar-via-script.aspx
https://desktopdeploy.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/how-to-deploy-windows-7-taskbar-pinned-icons-by-group-policy/
Any thoughts on this?
I need to pin all the office product links to the taskbar for all users in my domain.
I’d prefer to make this happen at the PC (Windows 7) level and not push out a group policy but if you can show me step by step for group policy preference using Server 2000 then please do.