Change Lock Screen Background in Windows 10

Ex_Brit · 08 Aug 2015

OK, did reset and it redid all my drive letters and as I prefer (in a multi-boot for the sake of clarity) to keep drive letters the same throughout I formatted and reinstalled using the method in your multi-boot Tute which basically has been the same through several OS's actually. Install from your main OS using the setup.exe in the Sources folder on your DVD. This way I actually had to enter a product key which fortunately I knew. All's well, got 18 zillion things to install of course and numerous "fiddles" to do LOL
P.S. Lock screen is alive and well.....!!
Thanks Shawn.

Brink · 08 Aug 2015

Great news. It must have been one of those unknown upgrade issues.

Ex_Brit · 08 Aug 2015

Indeed, it shall remain a mystery.

GamerwGlasses · 10 Aug 2015

Brink said:

Hello Gamer, :)

You'll need to ask your domain administrator what they have set.

I'll check it out. I did find out though ,that it keeps defaulting to C:\Windows\Web\Screen\img000.jpg. Can't seem to overwrite it. Though I did see stuff for windows 8 about taking ownership and etc. Not sure if it'll help here yet.

altae · 10 Aug 2015

Nice tutorial except... it does not work. Like so many others have already experienced it is simply impossible to change the lockscreen picture on my pc. It's even not possible to change it to an image that comes with Windows 10. I'd say: Huge fail MS

Brink · 10 Aug 2015

Hello Altae,

It works just fine for me to change the lock screen with. Do note that this is only for the lock screen, and not for the sign in screen.

Please give more details and screenshots for what you see instead.

GamerwGlasses · 11 Aug 2015

1) If you have Windows 10 (not Pro) try this for lock screen settings if you are unable to change)

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SystemProtectedUserData\Your Machine ID S-x-x-x\AnyoneRead\LockScreen
In here the computer set the following:
CacheFormat_P set to a value of 0 (REG_DWORD)
GPImagePath_P set to C:\Lock Screen Wallpapers\img100.jpg (This is my location for wall papers) type REG_SZ
SizeX_P set to 0x00000780 (1920) type REG_DWORD
SizeY_P set to 0x00000438 (1080) type REG_DWORD

You may have to set higher permissions to be able to write to this part of the registry. Backup registry just in case something does not work correctly. This is
just my observations.

2) For those with Windows 10 Pro I did this to get it to work when on domain without connected to 2008 or 2012 server.
1. Type in gpedit
2. Go to Computer Configuration under Local Computer Policy
3. Go to Administrative Templates
4. Go to Control Panel
5. Go to Personalization
6. Turn force a specific default lock scren image to enable and Double-Click this. Under Options is a box to enter the path to your picture. Once entered, hit ok.
7. Turn prevent changing lock screen image to disabled.

Lock the system and it should work right away.

Hope it helps.

altae · 12 Aug 2015

Thanks but I found a solution (at least partially). It turned out that changing the lockscreen picture does not work if users are forced to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to skip the lockscreen and get to the login screen (or what it's called). As soon as a disabled this function changing the lockscreen picture worked again. But what's still not working is showing infos from apps (e.g. weather) on the lockscreen. So it seems that it is still somehow broken.

slyphnier · 18 Aug 2015

not sure why, but slideshow only working after i login... on power-up/reboot/restart it only showing static image... anyone experiencing same issue ? or know how to fix this ?

Brink · 18 Aug 2015

slyphnier said:

not sure why, but slideshow only working after i login... on power-up/reboot/restart it only showing static image... anyone experiencing same issue ? or know how to fix this ?

Hello Slyphnier, :)

Do you have secure sign-in enabled by chance?

If you have enabled secure sign-in where users are required to press CTRL+ALT+DEL to unlock, then that would cause the slide show to not play on the lock screen for all users.