Spiceworld 2015

So I'm still in Austin for one more night. I attended Spiceworld 2015 for the first time, and what an amazing conference! I was a little disappointed in a couple of the breakout sessions but that's to be expected. For the price, it was well worth it to network with other admins, get my "business" card out there with my blog's address, and talk to some vendors. We're looking at a possible converged infrastructure project, and possibly a new backup solution (even though I love Veeam, they don't support KVM). I got a lot of questions answered and met a lot of great people, including from my municipal sector. Hopefully we can keep the relationships going and help each other out. It was really cool, and a little bit overwhelming, to get so much swag from the vendors. Here's a picture from day one, and day two was just as much.

Windows 10 - Useful Group Policies (Part 2 of ??) - Get Rid of Microsoft Edge Taskbar Pin

I'm crunched for time today, but I thought I would at least throw out something today.

One of my current sticking points in creating a workable Windows 10 machine for my users is getting rid of the Microsoft Edge icon that's pinned to the taskbar.

Yes, Edge looks appealing as a browser. My helpdesk, though, is going to have all kinds of questions and issues related to Edge. I don't have the manpower, so we're getting rid of Edge as much as we can.

The only way I've found to get rid of the pinned Edge icon is to nuke all of the pinned items.

To accomplish this, I use a Group Policy Preferences Registry item under User Configuration.

Create a delete action for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband, but remember to go to the "Common" tab and check the box that says "Apply once and do not reapply", or else your users' pinned items will be disappearing on them!

Now if I could just figure out how to get rid of the Start Menu pinned item.....