As part of a Windows 7 deployment I’ve needed to make a few changes to the look and feel of the desktop.  Here are a few useful tips

Remove the Windows Media Player icon from taskbar

In your unattend.xml file, add Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup to the OOBE system pass.  There’s  a setting called ShowWindowsMediaPlayer.  Set the value of this setting to FALSE

Deploy pinned taskbar icons using Group Policy

The files are stored in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar and registry settings are stored in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband

Configure the task bar on a Windows 7 PC

Import the registry settings from HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband into Group Policy Preferences

Copy the files from %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar to a shared folder and use Group Policy Preferences to apply them to other PCs

Change the Start Menu to “Combine when taskbar is full”

Use Group Policy Preferences to apply the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\TaskbarGlomLevel  Set the value of  TaskbarGlomLevel  to 1

Remove the IE welcome message 

Change the setting in Group Policy called “Prevent performance of First Run Customize Settings” to “Go directly to home page”

Remove the Lync welcome message

Use Group Policy Preferences to set HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\FirstRunPlayed to 1