Here’s a short guide that was a bit too much to fit into the reference materials section.
I had been asked to install Classic Shell on some laptops and tablets for deployment. As part of the deployment process, I went ahead a built in into the reference image that would be used. In order to prevent the Classic Shell welcome screen from appearing at first logon I added the configuration registry keys to the default registry hive.
The below script will mount the default registry hive, insert the keys, and unmount the hive for you.
CODE (ClassicShellDefaults.bat)
@ECHO off TITLE Set Classic Shell Defaults CLS ECHO ******************************************** ECHO Set Classic Shell Defaults for Default User ECHO ******************************************** ECHO. ECHO Setting Classic Shell defaults to skip options screen at new ECHO user logon. ECHO. rem Set Defaults for Classic Shell to skip options screen reg load "hku\temp" "%USERPROFILE%\..\Default User\NTUSER.DAT" rem Windows 7 style reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings" reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicShell\Settings" reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu" /v ShowedStyle2 /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings" /v SkipMetro /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings" /v Version /t REG_DWORD /d 0x04020004 /f rem Bypass start screen at logon reg ADD "hku\temp\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage" /v OpenAtLogon /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg unload "hku\temp" ECHO. ECHO Complete! ping -n 5 localhost >nul
Bonus .MST file (MSI transform file) to install only the Classic Start feature (useful for Group Policy, command line, and other automated installs).
Unpack the MSI files from the Classic Shell executable from the command line with parameter extract32 or extract64 based on your needs, then deploy with this file.
This transform was created with Orca for v4.2.1 x64.