Spotlight now broken on all PC's

Hello Fthku,


No, no solution so far.
Even if Spotlight is not that important it is super annoying since you are reminded every day (often several times a day) that something is broken.


I have done a couple of more experiments:


1) I bought a brand new PC. When setting it up I signed in with the same Microsoft account as on the other 3 PC's. Sync seems to by on be default, but I turned that off.
The good news is that Spotlight is working (new images are downloaded and displayed on the lock screen together with text/tips. It often takes a few days between every change of images. The PC started off with the dreaded "blue lake with red backpack", but after about 4 days I saw the first Spotlight image (just now I observed in real time that an image file was deleted and a new image was downloaded to the …\LocalState\Assets folder.


2) I made a local (non-Microsoft) account on one of the PC's with broken Spotligt. Once again, I was first served the "blue lake with red backpack" image. After a few days (maybe 4-5) the first Spotlight image appeared. I also observed that two images were downloaded to the …\LocalState\Assets folder, the current image and a pending image (actually 4 images were downloadedsince there are two versions of each image, both a portrait and a landscape orientation). However, this image has not changed. After more than a week I turned Spotlight off and then on again (reboot in between). It then got back to the "blue lake with red backpack" image (and no next overlay). At the same time, I noticed that all but one Spotlight image was deleted from the …\LocalState\Assets folder. No new image has been downloaded (so far).


I do not know if this has something to do with Bing other that the images are from the Bing image collection.

Ah, I see. Well, thanks for replying so quickly in any case, I'll be sure to update you if I find a solution myself.

Hi there, I am having the same issues and the Image is always Lake with red backpack in all my PCs! I tried MS tech support and after losing about 6 hours in various phone calls with them I got absolutely nothing. Anyone had any success? I also want to add that Windows Spotlight works fine on all other local or MS accounts on the same PCs so it's evident that the problem is with the specific Microsoft account (and some secret BING IDs maybe?) and so the fix probably would have to come from Microsoft and not by doing anything on our PCs.

Hi Brink, yes I did many times and also MS support tried via the remote tool. Sometimes when doing this fixes the problem but it’s always only temporary after a few hours/days it revers to the dreaded mountain lake with red backpack image and stays there. This is the case with all 5 PCs I got in my lan and also other PCs that are in remote locations. I think that even by using a local account, but then let’s say registering with your MS account in the Windows 10 mail app, will make the problem appear! All this with keeping sync OFF in all PCs and also trying to go from Local to MS and then back to Local, problem still persists!