Reset / Unpin all items in Windows 8 Start Screen quickly

Question

I got 200+ shortcuts pinned on the Windows 8 start screen by some rogue program.

It would be a pain to right-click every item and then click Unpin to remove them:

Is there a way to remove all the items from the start screen easily?

Solution

1. Open Command Prompt (Admin) by pressing Win + X, A

2. Copy these lines:

   del %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms
   del %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak
   tskill explorer
   

3. Right-click in Command Prompt and select Paste:

   

4. Press Enter.

5. You're done. Now the Windows 8 start screen will reset to its original state:

Comments

[bryan kennedy]

This works great to reset it to the default, but do you have any idea how I could set it to entirely blank?