Lock screen wallpaper MIA

[leerandall]

Every once in a while, I'll wake up my SP6 to find that my lock screen wallpaper is gone and replaced by a solid blue background. All it takes to get the wallpaper back is to enter my PIN to log in, right-click on the desktop, click on Personalize, Lock screen, then select another wallpaper, then re-select the missing wallpaper. I can then put the SP6 to sleep, then wake it up and my wallpaper is back as it was before it went MIA. Anybody know what might be causing it to go away occasionally? It's not a showstopper, just an irritation. It's running Win10 home build 1809 on i7/8GB/256GB SSD.

 

[sharpuser]

That’s a new one. Interesting problem.

Does it happen with any image file, or only one? I am asking because an extra large file, or complicated image, may be taking longer to load than Windows can cold load.

 

[leerandall]

It's the stock background image that comes with Windows 10, the one overlooking a lake in the middle of some mountains.

 

[sharpuser]

Must be very annoying, as you say. Tried a “Reset” with “Keep my files” ?

 

[leerandall]

Annoying indeed, but not annoying enough to do a reset. But thanks for your input. I was hoping someone else might have had this issue and found a solution already. Perhaps as time goes by...

 

[sharpuser]

I have had the issue, but only on the first startup after a Windows Insider update. Not at all like your issue.

Make sure the file is not on a network drive, or a slow or Flash drive.

 

[leerandall]

It's located wherever Windows installed the stock wallpapers on the C drive.

 

[sharpuser]

Enable “Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing” if you have not, already.

 

[leerandall]

Can you tell me why you suggest doing this? I prefer not to have animations turned on, especially window min/max'ing.

 

[sharpuser]

As it turns out, when animations are disabled, Windows 10 may not load the lock screen image in time to display, in order to get you up and running more quickly.

I found this out by disabling animations on my Surface Book 2 as a test on your behalf. The screen came up black.

 

[leerandall]

Understood. Thank you for that, by the way. Since this happens so infrequently and can be rectified so easily, I'm going to live with it as is and keep animations turned off. But at least now I know how to fix it should it ever become a REAL issue. Thanks again for your time.