In this post we will guide how to prevent user from changing Start Screen Color. Here’s the complete procedure.
If you own a Windows 8 running PC or Laptop and it is shared over a network, then there might be chances that other people over the same network can change your Start Screen settings such as theme and background color. In order to avoid such situations, you can simply lock your Start Screen Settings, so that no one can tweak into it.
Or consider a case where you own a network with different user running Windows 8 on their PC. In that case , you can lock the settings so that none of the user can change it.
In this tutorial, I’m going to tell you lock settings for your Start Screen. But, before you begin, make sure you’ve admin rights or logged in with administrator account to tweak group policy settings.
Here’s how you can lock your Start screen settings :
1.Press Windows + C ( or move the cursor to extreme top right corner) to invoke the charm bar.
2. Go to Search (apps) and type gpedit.msc .
3. This will open up the Local Group Policy Settings Window. Since our target is to prevent user from changing the background, Select ‘Prevent Changing start menu background’.
4. Right Click on ‘Prevent Changing start menu’ and choose Edit.
5. This will open up the ‘Prevent Changing start menu’ Window. You will notice this setting is disable by default. To enable it, click on
Enable.
6. Click OK to make changes.
Once you have make changes to the policy setting, now you need to update it. Here’s how to update.
1. Open Windows Run console using Windows key + R. Type the command: gpupdate/force and press Enter.
2. Press Windows key + C to open Charm bar.
Goto Settings → Change PC Settings → Personalization → Start Screen.
You will see that Start Screen Settings are locked with a message on the top ‘Some settings on this page have been disabled by group policy’.
Which means, you have locked your Start Screen Successfully.
In case you do not see any message or the Start Screen is not locked, restart your computer and check again. If it still doesn’t work for you, try do the following :
1. Press Windows Key + R to open Windows Run Console.
2. Type in : regedit
Note :Windows might ask you to grant permission to open registry editor, in that case Click ‘Yes’ to allow.
3. Once the Registry Editor is open, Navigate to the following registry key :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Personalization
4. Right Click on pane of the Window. Create a DWORD value and name it ‘NoChangingStartMenuBackground’.
5. Now right click on the created DWORD and select ‘Modify’. A small Window will pop up, like shown below :
6. Set the value for value data as 0 or 1.
Enable Start Screen Background Change : ‘0’
Disable Start Screen Background Change : ‘1’
7. Close the registry editor and reboot the System to see the results. Go to Start Screen and check if it locked or not.
