Prevent Users From Changing Start Screen in Windows 8

Microsoft has launched Windows 8. Windows 8 provides much more from Microsoft. It is full of rich features and Metro apps that make a good user interface experience. Windows 8 provides many options to the user to customize their screen using Personalization settings such as lock screen, background theme of start screen etc. The Windows 8 Personalization setting has three type of options such as lock screen, start screen, and account picture which the user can set according to their choice.

By default any user of the PC can change the start screen setting according to their need. But sometimes you want to prevent a PC user from changing any background setting of the start screen such as the background theme of the start screen, color scheme of the screen and set the screen setting to be uniform across all the machines. No users have the options to change the setting. Windows 8 provides the feature to prevent the user from changing any settings of the PC.

If you are a administrator of the system, then you can prevent other PC users from changing the background setting of the system.

In this article we are going to learn how to prevent aleration of the Start Menu background settings. To begin it is necessary that you login with Administrator rights. In order to do this setting you need to change in the local group policy setting.

Steps to be followed:

Step 1 Go to Start Screen, Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search.

Step 2 Type gpedit.msc in the search box and select apps from the bottom.



Step 3 Then, select the gpedit.msc from the right side bar.



This will open the Local Group Policy Editor. Now, navigate to the following location.

Step 4 Then, expand the User Configuration, and select the Administrative Templates.

Step 5 Select Control Panel and expand it.

Step 6 Select the Personalization under the control panel.



Step 7 On the side, you will see the option "Prevent changing start menu background"; double-click on it.



Step 8 It opens a window in which there is three types of settings that you can see by clicking on the Previous setting and Next setting buttons at the top of the window.

Step 9 The first setting is "Prevents users from changing the background image shown when the machine is locked". Click on the Enabled radio button to change the setting.



Step 10 The next setting is "prevents users from changing the look of their start menu background, such as its color or accent". Again Click on the Enabled button to change the setting.



Step 11 After all the settings, click on the apply and Ok buttons to apply the changing settings.

Step 12 Now, when the user personalizes their own settings he/she is not able to change the start screen setting as it is disabled by the group policy.