How to back up and restore your Windows 8 Start screen layout

Feb 01, 2014, by admin

Windows 8 Start Screen is one of the major update when compared to windows 7. Whenever you login in to windows 8 operating system it directly takes you to the start screen. Later Microsoft update it to windows 8.1  which has an option to by pass it and directly go to desktop. Microsoft also allow users to customize the start screen. If you misplaced any start screen items or you accidentally deleted any items from start screen, there is a way to get your start screen. Lets see how to backup and restore Windows 8 Start Screen.

Step 1: Open the Run dialog box by hitting Windows key + R.

Step 2: Type, “%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows” and hit Enter to open Windows Explorer to the location of the Start screen layout files.

Step 3: Copy the files, “appsFolder.itemdata-ms” and “appsfolder.itemdata-ms.bak” to your backup folder.

If something happens to your Start screen layout and you want to restore it, just copy the backup files back to the original location and overwrite the files already in the folder.