Remove icons pinned to TaskBar by group policy

From Remove icons pinned to TaskBar by group policy (microsoft.com)

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Hi,

Before we go further, I would like to confirm the following questions:

• Whether you need delete all pinned icons or just the two icons but keep others?
• As you said:“ remove icons pinned to TaskBar by group policy” in the title and “I have stopped and disabled Group Policy service from running and manually removed or changed most of the settings in the Registry”. I couldn’t understand it clearly, whether you mean that you don’t want use group policy?

Here is the test result in my lab:

Based on my research and test, the pinned icons are stored in two locations:

In the File System, stored shortcut files under %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar.

In the Registry, stored configuration under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband.

We could delete the shortcut directly, but it will keep an invalid icon on the taskbar.

If you need delete all pained icons, you may use group policy setting “Remove pinned programs from the Taskbar” under “User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar”.

For your reference:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/28239.how-to-manage-windows-taskbar-items-pinning-using-group-policy.aspx

Hope the information above is helpful for you.

If you need further help, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,

William

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