Desktop background randomly comes up black

I have up to date version of Windows 10 Pro 1909 installed on Lenovo T520 8GB RAM.

When installed, I set the Desktop background as a solid blue colour. Now, every now and then, the background is solid black after booting. Refreshing does not correct this. If I go the settings - personalize, the black box is checked off. If I recheck the blue box, then we are back where it it should be. THis may be OK for a few days, and then I will get the black screen again.

Anyone have any idea why this would happen? Never did with Win7.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I know why this happening, but not sure what to do about it...

Is it possible that you currently have, or had in the past, a system that had a black background selected and that was set to synchronize settings to the cloud?

I had a system in the past that kept insisting on changing a few settings like my desktop image and this was a result of my sync settings. I would change settings only to have them simply revert back again at some point.

I finally had to turn sync off.

You can go into Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings to review your configuration.

You could try simply disabling the sync - my guess is that the setting for "Theme" would be the only thing you need to disable. At least as a test, if your background does not change back to black again, then it's likely that this was the cause.

BTW, I plan to research this further and I'll let you know what I find. Here is the mystery to me:

Let's say I have 5 computers set to sync. Whose settings are deemed to be the settings to which everyone else is synced? If I change settings on a system, why does it not sync that change to all my other machines rather than reverting mine back again? How can I change the settings to which all machines are synced?

Okay, I already have some info. Take a look at this post:

Sync - Which computer controls the settings?

This says that whoever last changes a setting will update what is synced. Maybe that's how it is supposed to work, but I definitely had problems with it in the past, although it has been a while since I tried messing with this.

Let me know if that helps at all. I hope I'm not barking up the wrong tree

The only Windows "device" I have synced, is a backup of Windows 7 that is on same machine. It is on separate drive and can be booted by switching boot drive. It was set to the default windows theme - blue background. No sync set up on Win 7. I don't use this, but do boot it about once/week to get Onedrive/Dropbox/Google/Thunderbird synced.

Windows 10 was set up to sync "other Windows settings" - Maybe that causes confusion, but seeing there are never two windows computers running at same time, hard to see why. I turned that off anyway. Only syncing passwords now.

We will see what happens. It is only a minor annoyance, but should not happen.

Thanks for updating me. I'll keep my eyes open for any other possibilities. If I come up with anything else I'll let you know for sure.

I don't use an image. Just a plain color (blue). This morning, the background came up black again. Maybe this is just a Win 10 problem? I will avoid booting Win7 off my other drive for a few days and see if background stays Blue. Then try booting Win 7 instead one day and then go back to Win10. I have done this in past within same day , and the the blue background remained. It just seems to go black for first boot of the day. I have now turned off all syncing in Win10 settings.

PS: As mentioned above this is a dual boot laptop. OS chosen by switching boot drive in BIOS.

After having no problems since previous posts, today desktop came up black again. Rebooting made no difference. Current Win10 is 1909 build 18363.720.

Possibly caused by a Windows update? No updates since March 14th though.

I decided to just reset it to blue.