Sign in screen vs lock screen backgrounds

mkr10001 said:

how...???
why...??

I share your frustration, but as I said in post #43 of the thread AntJac pointed you to...

Bree said:

It seems to literally 'Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen' - ie. whatever is selected for the lock screen in 'Picture', despite the fact that the lock screen is actually set to 'Spotlight' and not 'Picture'.

So what I have done is save one of my favourite Spotlight pictures, set that as the lock screen background picture and turned on 'Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen'. Having restarted, locked the screen and signed in and out a few times to check that I do indeed have my chosen picture on the sign-in screen I can turn Spotlight back on for the lock screen.

Find and Save Windows Spotlight Background Images in Windows 10

I still get the static picture on the sign-in screen, but at least it's now one I like :)

Just seen this on the MS community site. I havent done anything in registry yet as i am very tentative about messing around with anything in there but maybe one of the more technical guys can see if this works and post back?

I have read a lot of nonsense about how to fix the Windows 10 Spotlight not working issue of the last couple of weeks since I personally have had the issue. I am not a forum poster generally but I had to post my situation in the hope it helps someone.

Basically I get a black lock screen when I press "WIN-L" or when the laptop boots up. I generally hibernate but the same thing happens when I boot from cold. The "Preview" pane in the "Settings - Personalisation - Lock Screen" section was grey when "Windows Spotlight" is chosen, but correctly displays a picture if "Picture" or "Slideshow" was chosen.
Upon checking the "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_<somerandomchara cters>\LocalState\Assets" folder for the images, I could see that the content was being downloaded correctly. When I deleted the files and new ones would appear. If I changed one of the larger files to have a .jpg extension I could open the image and it was fine, but no amount of changing available settings would make Spotlight work correctly.
I resorted to checking the registry myself for something obvious and found the "hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\lock screen" location. With the Windows Spotlight feature enabled I noticed that under the "Creative" sub-key the locations for the Windows Spotlight images are set. For me the "LandscapeAssetPath" and the "PortraitAssetPath" were set to an image file name that didn't exist and if I turned Spotlight off and on again it would set the same incorrect image file name each time.
I located a correct landscape image and manually updated the regkey accordingly (note: the directory path to my profile was correct its just the image file name that was wrong). After doing this Windows Spotlight started to work. "WIN-L" once again displayed an image! I have turned Spotlight off and on again in the "Settings - Personalisation - Lock Screen" menu and it displays a new image each time. Also I "Didnt Like" one of the images and it immediately changed it to a new one.
I am using a standard laptop so I cant say if the same fix applies to Portrait mode.
Also, I haven't rebooted my machine as yet, but fingers crossed this works permanently.
Hope this helps someone as it has frustrated me for the last couple of weeks.

AntJac said:

Just seen this on the MS community site. I havent done anything in registry yet as i am very tentative about messing around with anything in there but maybe one of the more technical guys can see if this works and post back?

That solution is for a slightly different problem from the one we have...

Basically I get a black lock screen when I press "WIN-L" or when the laptop boots up.

...whereas we get a Spotlight picture, but a different static picture for the sign-in screen. Actually, I get the Spotlight picture on the sign-in screen for WinKey+L but the static picture at start up.

I've checked my registry settings referred to in that fix and found them to be correct, the changes described were not needed.

Ah i see apologies Bree i should have read it again.

AntJac said:

Ah i see apologies Bree i should have read it again.

No apology needed, it may have held a hint to help us. Worth looking into.

Spotlight seems fragile and prone to a number of problems. In our case I feel Spotlight is working properly, and it's something in the way Windows starts up that's ignoring the 'show Spotlight picture on sign in screen' setting.

Cheers Bree. Seems like there's more and more bugs in Windows now. Just realized the DISM restore command only goes up to 99 5% and then says Operation completed successfully!

Update on this. This morning my Sign in screen when first booting up my system was a Spotlight picture. A different one to what i had yesterday. Very strange to see it spring back into life

AntJac said:

Update on this. This morning my Sign in screen when first booting up my system was a Spotlight picture. A different one to what i had yesterday. Very strange to see it spring back into life

hmm wonder what cuased that

It's not working again now. Only lasted for a day!

maybe whatever has fluffed up will get straightened out in October's update