Windows Start Menu keeps resizing to narrow (1 column) size

Question

I have Win 10 22H2 installed, managed by my company. By default, my Start Menu is one column wide (I'm showing only the tiles). I have enough tiles so for accessing the lower tiles, I have to scroll down.

To overcome this, I have resized my Start Menu to show several columns. Now, from time to time (several times a day), the menu is resetting its size back to one column.

I tried to use the "Use Start full screen" setting, to no avail. What happens is that the contents of the Menu keep resizing to one column, while the Start Menu itself stays full screen.

I have pretty much tried all the currently available remedies I could google for, up to reinstalling Windows from scratch, but the behavior has been the same.

My company is assuring that there is no policy in place to reset the Start Menu's size.

Also, the menu is not resetting when doing a gpupdate /force, logging off/on or even restarting, but at random other times.

Answer 1

The issue of unstable Taskbar settings appears to be a bug in the Windows OS. The simple work-around is to set the Taskbar size and then to lock it using Group Policy; it may be unlocked the same way. However, one does not need the GPO Editor to do so (which is not available in some Windows versions), since that GPO can be set with a simple Registry file.

Copy the following to a text editor (e.g., Notepad), save to a .reg file, and run to lock the Taskbar settings. (Note that Notepad may use an incorrect extension; change to .reg if so.)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"TaskbarLockAll"=dword:00000001

To unlock the Taskbar, if you wish to resize it or change its location, save the following to a .reg file and run it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"TaskbarLockAll"=dword:00000000

Then run the first .reg file to keep Windows from changing those settings.