Reset and Re-register Windows Spotlight in Windows 10  

NMI said:

1809: Settings doesn't appear in Background apps.
Sorry; build 17763.292.

How odd, I have just looked at five machines on 1809. Three of the machines (Home, Pro, Pro x86) have Settings in background apps, the other two (one Pro, one Home x86) don't.

The only common factor for the two that don't have Settings are that they were clean installs of 1803, upgraded to 1809 (one Home x86, the other Pro x64). The others that do have Settings were either a clean install of 1809 (in a VM) or upgrades from Win7 up through all Win10 versions up to 1809.

@NMI and @Brink

I have compared the registry of the two machines in my screenshots above. The one missing 'Settings' is a W10 Pro machine, clean installed as 1803, subsequently upgraded to 1809. The one with 'Settings' is a VM clean install of 1809 running on the same machine and installed using the same ISO that upgraded its host machine.

The host machine is missing the registry key windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications\

Creating this key (no need to give it any values) restores Settings to the list of Background apps.

This missing Settings in Background apps seems to have been the fault of the clean install of 1803. On the other machine with Settings missing I restored its original 1803 image. Almost all items in Background apps were missing, just five were listed!

So I dont know if this is the same issue but here it goes...I locked my computer last night and have it set to slideshow, so it just displayed one of the windows images with no clock or app info like weather whatsoever. Usually it will show a default windows image and after a second or two switch to the slideshow and display the clock etc. But now it is just stuck without the time or info and when I press a key it flashes the latest image that was displayed in the slideshow(weird) then log on comes up. But if you let the logon timeout it will start the slideshow. It happens on all options whether slideshow, image, or spotlight. I also do not get new images in spotlight nor little messages about the image. I followed the tutorial but am waiting for 24hrs later tonight.

Read a lot but post almost nothing. Been chasing my tail on this. Finally ran your suggestion and it worked. Thanks so much.

Bree said:

@NMI and @Brink

The host machine is missing the registry key windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BackgroundAccessApplications\

Creating this key (no need to give it any values) restores Settings to the list of Background apps.

Thanks Bree. That put Settings into Background apps for me.

(Sorry I overlooked this useful reply for a few weeks somehow!)

NMI said:

Sorry I overlooked this useful reply for a few weeks somehow!

Not to worry, at least it did the job for you in the end

Three and half years after the release of Windows 10, we still don't know why Windows Spotlight sometimes stops working and needs to be reset.

Ground Sloth said:

Three and half years after the release of Windows 10, we still don't know why Windows Spotlight sometimes stops working and needs to be reset.

Three and a half years from now, we still won't know why Windows Spotlight sometimes stops working and needs to be reset.