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The following note will help you to set pinned taskbar icons for networked windows 7 users.

Set Pinned Taskbar Icons

Log into a workstation and set the pinned taskbar icons the way you would like your network users to see them. Test them out to make sure they all work correctly. For example, I have set Internet Explorer, Firefox, Word, Excel, Publisher and Kidpix4 icons to the taskbar.

Copy Pinned Taskbar Icon Files

There are two places where the pinned taskbar icons are set - the registry and the user appdata folder.

First, open the currently logged in users appdata folder. The easiest way to do this on Windows 7 is to click start, and in the run box type %appdata%. You will need to make sure you have the hidden files turned off to be able to see the next set of folders.

Once in the %appdata% folder, browse through \Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar. Copy these files into your mandatory profile's \Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar folder.

Copy Pinned Taskbar Icons Registry Settings

While still logged into the user account that has the pinned taskbar icons, open the registry editor and export the following key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband]

You can either add this registry key to the user's login script so it is applied each time they log in, or you can do what I did and add it to the ntuser.man file.

Copy the ntuser.man file on your server to the workstation where you are working. Open your ntuser.man with regedit - Click on HKEY_USERS, then click File -> Load Hive. Select the ntuser.man file to open. Give the key a name, like temp.

Open the exported reg key and change the path so it reads: [HKEY_USERS\<name eg temp>\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband].Save the reg file, then double click on it to import it onto the registry.

Unload the temp hive - Click HKEY_USERS\temp and click File -> Unload Hive. Copy the ntuser.man file back into the mandatory profile location on your sever.