Windows – How to create an Computer Icon on Windows 8 Server Beta’s Desktop

For Chrome you have the ability to create an extra individual shortcut to Chrome with your other profile on the taskbar. You can open Chrome (default icon) and switch to another profile. When doing so Chrome creates another instance, separate from the default one. You can pin that separate instance to the taskbar as a second icon. That icon is the shortcut to Chrome for that profile.

Steps to reproduce:

• Open Chrome on the taskbar
• Click your profile-name at the upper-right (left from the close/minimize-buttons)
• Choose Switch person
• Login with a different Google-account
• Now Chrome had created a second icon on the taskbar
• Right-click that icon and choose Pin this program to taskbar

The second shortcut is located in the ImplicitAppShortcuts-folder of the User pinned-folder.

(extra tip and off-topic: When clicking the orb (Windows-start) you can type shell: user pinned followed by enter to be taken directly to the correct folder. Here is a list of other interesting shell-shortcuts.)

Edit:
Of course these are not the only location where data is stored for the pinned application.

%AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
%AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu 
%AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\ImplicitAppShortcuts

For example the ordering is not in these folders. The order of the pinned applications (and jump-list/right-click) is in the registry here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband\Favorites
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband\FavoritesResolve

However this is a REG_BINARY value so changing the order or adding one isn't easily done in regedit.

(Some info here)

I haven't (yet) found a simple api to do this all.

Edit #2
Wow, it's actually quite easy to do with any program (without Windows API).

• Create a shortcut to a program and edit the target to include something like /profile=1 or any other unique parameter for this program
• It doesn't matter where you place the shortcut (it can be on the desktop) because it's temporary
• Start the program via the shortcut. Because it has a unique start-target it gets a new icon in the taskbar.
• Right-click the new icon and pin it to the taskbar
• You can delete the icon from the desktop

So the pattern seems to be this:

If you have ever pinned a shortcut to start, then any shortcut later created to the same target, will also be pinned.

One solution: rename or relocate the shortcut's target.

For example, I had previously pinned a shortcut to VNC, so I couldn't get it to appear in All Apps. I renamed VNC-Viewer-5.2.3-Windows-64bit.exe to vnc 5.2.3.exe, and shortcuts created to it in Programs now appear in All Apps, instead of pinned.

Shortcuts to never-before-pinned targets, or renamed targets, will show up in All Apps. You may have to restart to see them, but they will show up.

Unfortunately, you don't seem to be able to unpin a shortcut in the sense of removing this association. Instead, unpin simply removes the shortcut, and if you put it back, that is treated as 'turning the pin back on'. I infer that there is a database of 'should be pinned' targets, located here:

C:\Users\Saber\AppData\Local\TileDataLayer\Database\vedatamodel.edb

I don't know any easy way to edit that, though. Perhaps if you used a hex-editor to change a letter in the target path in that file, it would fix it.

Other posters have suggested overwriting the entire TileDataLayer folder with a copy from a clean windows user, however that seems a bit dodgy to me.