Windows 8 & Chrome

Another little funny this afternoon continuing to set up a new Win 8 PC for a friend.

She likes Chrome, understands how to set it up to suit her poor eyesight, so wanted it as her default browser.

So I downloaded and installed it, set a Tile on the Start screen. All ok.

She has two email addresses, one gmail for business and one hotmail for private. So she wanted 2 tiles to go straight to the relevant mailbox.

I couldn't see how to create a new tile in the Start screen, so created a shortcut on the desktop with the Chrome parameter line containing the relevant URL. Then right clicked and chose Pin to Start.

When to the Start screen and there they were.

For a few minutes anyway...

After a few minutes and switching in and out of Start screen and apps, suddenly the web page specific tiles had disappeared, the plain Chrome tile was still there.

Went to the Desktop and re-pinned them to Start. They were now back, but with the name followed by (2). Clearly the original Tiles were still around but not being displayed.

Not surprisingly these also disappeared after a few minutes of activity.

Went to the Start screen Tile file location and could see both the original shortcuts and the (2) ones. Although I deleted the (2) ones the original ones would not stay on the Start screen.

All through this the plain Chrome tile remained on the Start screen.

There are many reports on the web of problems with Chrome Tile on Windows 8; however they seem to date back a year or more, and they also report it being a problem with the plain Chrome tile, not a web page specific Tile.

At the moment I've set 2 shortcuts on the desktop for her and they're working fine. She'd prefer however to have Tiles on the Start screen.

Anyone know what to do to get such a Tile to stay on the Start screen?

I don;t know how to get them to stay there but on a machine I had set up for a friend most of the useful tiles had vanished for some reason. To get them back I found a web page which said.

Right click on the sart screen, then click on the "ALL Apps" icon which appears.

Select the apps which are missing then choose "Pin to Start".

They will then show up again.

The fact that you had Hotmail(2) I think suggests that they wee still there just not showing.

As this is only happening on his machine I have not actually found a solution to stop it. I wondered if he had found some key combination for unpinning them by mistake.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Went to the Start screen Tile file location

Which is where pray?

I know the Start Screen All Apps location is \ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu but not that for the Tiles only.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

I know the Start Screen All Apps location is \ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu but not that for the Tiles only.

I thank that was the location. Loose terminology referring to it as the Tile location.

In their was Hotmail, Hotmail(2), etc. but none of the Hotmail Tiles were shown.

Of course, it could be a Microsoft anti-Chrome thing, but I doubt that would be allowed to survive for very long...