Arranging all the tiles on the Windows 8 start screen to meet your specific requirements can become a tedious task. Imagine a situation where you arrange all the tiles and some one rearranges or deletes some tiles – maybe on a multi-user computer. Wouldn't it be good if there was a way to restrict other users from rearranging or unpinning your tiles and tile layout? This is where Tile Locker, a freeware tool for Windows 8 can help you.

Prevent Users from Unpinning or rearranging Tiles

Paras Sidhu, 15, who has developed several freeware for The Windows Club has come up with Tile Locker. Tile Locker will lock the start screen tile layout & prevent users from unpinning or rearranging tiles on Windows 8 start screen. The bonus tip at the end of this post will also tell you how to back up your Tile layout.

Tile Locker will restrict the Start Screen Tile drag-and-drop function, thereby preventing users from rearranging the tiles. It will also disable the tile's right-click context menu thereby preventing users from deleting or unpinning the tile and uninstalling the app from the start screen.

To use Tile Locker, you have to run it as an administrator. The UI is pretty simple. To enforce this restriction, click on Enable and restart Explorer or your PC. The restriction will come into force. To disable this restriction, click on Disable and restart your explorer.exe.

Back up Windows 8 Start Screen Tile layout

Windows 8 Start Screen Tile database files that contain the tile locations, layout and states are stored in the following files, mentions TechNet:

  • %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms
  • %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak

If you wish to back up your Windows 8 Start Screen Tile layout, you can back up these files to a safe location.