Group Policy

How To Disable Change Start Screen Background Option In Windows 8

How To Disable Change Start Screen Background Option In Windows 8

Start Screen is one of the new thousand features introduced in Windows 8. With the personalization options, you can change or customize the Windows 8 Start Screen. Now consider the following scenario:

Your Windows 8 OS has multiple users on the same computer. You want that each user use the same Start Screen background - and you want to disallow users from changing it. In that case you have to prevent other users to change the Start Screen background. So how can you disable the option to change the Start Screen?

In this article, we are going to share with you the a trick which will let you disable Start Screen changing option. There are two ways to do it: Using the Registry Editor and using the Group Policy Editor.

Using Registry Editor

1. Press the Windows Key + R simultaneously and put regedit in Run dialog box.

2. Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Personalization

3. Now right-click in right pane of the window. Create a DWORD value and name it “NoChangingStartMenuBackground”.

4. Right click on above created DWORD value, select Modify. You will got this window:

5. Now you can use following values for Value data section:

Enable Start Screen Background Change =  '0' (Default Setting)

Disable Start Screen Background Change =   '1'

6. Close Registry Editor and reboot to see results.

Using Group Policy Editor

NOTE : This option for using group policy is only available in the Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise editions.

1. Press Windows Key + R combination and put gpedit.msc in Run dialog box.

2. In the left pane navigate to:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalization

3. Now look in the right pane, you'll got the policy named Prevent changing start menu background as shown above.

4. Double click on this policy to get the window shown below.

5. Now you can use following settings:

Allow Start Screen Background Change =  Disabled/Not configured (Default Setting)

Disable Start Screen Background Change =  Enabled

After making changes click Apply followed by OK.

That's it. Reboot to see the results.

How to download and Play Sid Meier's Civilization VI on Linux
Introduction to the game Civilization 6 is a modern take on the classic concept introduced in the series of the Age of Empires games. The idea was fai...
How to Install and Play Doom on Linux
Introduction to Doom The Doom Series originated in the 90s after the release of the original Doom. It was an instant hit and from that time onwards th...
Vulkan for Linux Users
With each new generation of graphics cards, we see game developers push the limits of graphical fidelity and come one step closer to photorealism. But...