Windows 10: Unable to set a lock screen background image (Win10).

My issue started in window 8.1, it's too bad because one of the only reasons I upgraded was in hopes that this issue would get resolved. Before today I was stuck on some random image from a Bing app I had about a year ago, but I renamed my System Data folder like outlined in one of the forms and now I just get a blank red screen for the lock screen. When I try to change my lock screen picture, it doesn't even give me an error, it just spins and spins for hours and hours!!!!

 

After much reading I managed to fix this problem.

I didn't have an image at the lock screen at startup. Whenever I tried to change the image to something of my preference it showed gray screen with endless loading.

Anyway, here is what I've done:

First I disabled apps that show on lockscreen:






Then I removed everything from [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lock Screen] , or at least remove most things from it. (The reason is the key will be populated with info later)

Or you can use this reg key with minimal entries: lockscreen.reg - Box

After that navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows

There you will find SystemData folder.

You have to take ownership of that folder. Here is a tutorial how: LINK

After that you can either rename the folder to SystemData_bak or delete it (your choise).
Finally restart explorer. Open Task Manager, find Windows Explorer and click on Restart.

And voila I was able to change the lock screen image.

You can check the reg key is now populated and SystemData is recreated.

 

I tried your method twice and I still have the grey box with the spinning dots. I am still unable to set my own lock screen photo. The whole PITA of gaining access to the SYSTEMDATA folder is ridiculous. It shouldn't be that secure and I'm certain that that is a big part of the issue. Glad this worked for you, but I'm still hosed. It's almost worth re-installing the OS, but I feel this happened after one of the many, many updates to Windows 10 and it would just happen again after all the trouble of doing so. I Have a 2012 R2 Essentials server running and restored a backup from several weeks ago, but the problem was still there. I could try going back further, but again, it gets to a point of diminishing return for the trouble.

A little background. I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 Ultimate. After the upgrade was complete, I did a Reset this PC to essentially get a fresh install of Windows 10. I was initially able to set a Lock Screen background and it was working for a few weeks. I then had a display issue when I was using RDP from work to my computer. All the fonts in Chrome were super small. I figured it was just the remote session, but when I got home it looked the same. I rebooted, same issue. I can't recall exactly what I did but it was after it had run updates. I recall uninstalling a Flash update and that seemed to fix the issue I was having, but then I noticed my Lock Screen no longer being the image I chose and started trying to fix that issue. The Lock Screen Apps do not appear on the Lock Screen as well. So at this point it may be more advantageous to just reset the PC again.

 

This worked for me. After many attempts with advice from other users, this was the solution. Thank you very much for making that .reg file available and not attaching some malicious software to it. I appreciate this!

 

I was having the same problem, cant change the lockscreen bg image and facing with endless loading circle. First, i tried restart my computer and tried again, unlike my expectations it isnt fixed. When i searched it on the internet, figured out that it is a common problem requires sth to be done. But i didnt want to follow long steps, i felt lazy. Instead i turned off wifi and tried it again. It worked. *Smile

 

Hi,

If your machine has group policy set to Disable "Require Cntrl Alt Del", this will cause your lock screen to not show selected image. Machine doesn't have to be on a domain as this can be set locally as well. So, I have an image, I saved it as a .png and put it in Windows\Web\LockScreen...you can put yours anywhere.

Next, do the following steps and it will fix the issue:
Go to regedt

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization (if personalization doesn't exist, create it)

Create a new string value named LockScreenImage.

Set its value data to the full path of the desired image which will be used as the lock screen image (ex. c:\windows\web\lockscreen\imagename.png

 

Try creating the key, ( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization ) it's easy enough. Then all you need is to create a dword called NoLockScreen with a value of 0 . This should rectify your problem

 

Just open the image with any photo editor and save it with a new name with .jpg extension. Worked for me, hope it works for you too.

 

Just open the image with any photo editor and save it with a new name with .jpg extension. Worked for me, hope it works for you too.

 

I had the exact same problem.
I solved it as follows:
1)Open run(Win+R)
2)type "regedit" (without the quotes)
3) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization
4)Right click 'NoLockScreen' from the right tab and click Modify..
5) Set it to 0.
6)Done!!
I was able to set my own lock screen after this.
Hope this helps
Cheers!

 

There was a key in my Reg that was locking me out of my lockscreen. After deleting these two keys I now have full control. I am assuming that the folder (Hawaii) was deleted at some point and Winders has been confused ever since.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization]"NoLockScreen"=dword:00000000"LockScreenImage"="C:\\Users\\xxxxx\\Pictures\\Hawaii\\blacksand.pn g"

 

I have one question. Whenever i go to regedit and search for that destination it says that it does not exist. When i checked the location Windows, there was no key with the name Personalization, so i created one and set the NoLockScreen value to 0(i created this dword file aswell). Do i need to add anything else to the key? Because when i restarted my computer it did nothing

 

Right Click START button. Click RUN. Type: msconfig and Click ok. Click TOOLS and scroll down to REGISTRY Editor and highlight it. Click LAUNCH located near the bottom right. It should open on PERSONALIZATION. On the menu to the right look for a registry entry that says Nolockscreen. Delete that entry and Restart your computer. It worked for me.

 

This is an old thread no doubt, however mrgeek's solution still works great this December 28th, 2017...Thanks! Very easy fix...