Comments on: Windows Spotlight stuck on one picture – How to Fix

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 01:53:00 +0000

All of the posts on the Internet for reset/reregistering Windows Spotlight do seem to occasionally work, but typically not forever. I’ve tried nearly all of them and Windows Spotlight nearly always gets stuck again. HERES A BETTER BAND-AID this might help you out until Microsoft figures out how to finally fix (or even start looking at) this common problem..

For each account on your PC..

1) Install app “Dynamic Theme” from MS Store (I suppose other image-rotators would work, but I used this one)

2) In “Dynamic Theme”, make sure Lockscreen is set for “System Settings”, meaning that D.T. is letting system take care of lockscreen (temporarily)

3) Switch to system lockscreen settings (under Personalization), and set to “Windows Spotlight”.. as well as “Show Picture on Signon Screen”. May or may not display old or repetitive picture at this point; does not matter

4) Reboot.. signon screen likely still old, but no worries, keep going

5) Switch to system lockscreen settings again, set to “Picture” and just accept what-ever comes up. DO NOT EVER CHANGE THIS AGAIN. TREAT IT LIKE A FRAGILE SNOWFLAKE!

6) Back in “Dynamic Theme->Lockscreen” app, set to “Windows Spotlight”

7) Also in “Dynamic Theme->Daily Spotlight Image”, choose other settings if desired, like Autosave, Dynamic Tile, etc.

8) Reboot again

The use of the store app “Dynamic Theme” (or any other image-rotator I guess) is really just for management of settings and pictures. The KICKER that Microsoft has not figured out yet is the step at POINT #3/#4/#5. Apparently, setting the Lockscreen to Windows Spotlight doesn’t really do what 99% of users think it should do.. but rebooting and
setting back to picture FINALLY makes Windows 10 respect the previous setting. This is why I say in point #5 DO NOT CHANGE, because once this band-aid is implemented, it would be easy to break if you start playing around with lockscreen picture settings again. I suppose it would not be catastrophic, just that you have to re-implement the band-id from scratch again, for all accounts. UGH.

By: Abdi

Abdi — Sun, 11 Nov 2018 08:02:59 +0000

In reply to Bernard. It says access denied because your not administrator. Try right clicking the powershell icon then click run as administrator.

By: Bernard

Bernard — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 01:39:27 +0000

same problem here. access denied even as Administrator

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 21:26:02 +0000

When I copied and entered the text into powershell it told me access was denied. Any idea why that would be? I’m logged in as the administrator.

By: Risspartan117

Risspartan117 — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 11:31:35 +0000

Nope, didn’t work. Let me explain my problem first. My Spotlight does get activated, in the sense that it downloads an image and uses that instead of using pics in the computer. The problem is, it doesn’t change. At all. Ever. I have tried pretty much everything I could find online – from deleting Assets to typing a series of commands in cmd. Nothing works.

Please note that I don’t get the option to see where the picture is from in the Lock Screen. All I see is the picture and the clock. It almost feels like Spotlight just downloads the image and then stops working altogether.