Desktop Picture Changing Unexpectedly - Perhaps Interesting Workaround

I know this has been sporadically reported over the years. One of my several Insider Windows 11 machines has an issue where, without fail, the desktop background reverts to a stock Microsoft image within 2 or 3 minutes after installing each Insider build, normally a weekly occurrence. I have the machine set to a single personal picture as background, not a slideshow, and the machine always changes it back to what appears to be a lunar scene. Usually this happens while I'm staring at the empty desktop after the new install. I change the picture back to what I intend, and life goes on.

Yesterday, I decided to see if I could bypass the issue after many months of not finding a solution on the web. I looked to see if I could find the actual Microsoft picture in question. And I stumbled on it DEEP within my user directory, in a folder called "assets". It had the name of 4260523a3029726b151406b55ad75 with no extension. I thought about copying my intended xxx.jpg background image on top of it, but decided to attack it from the other end.

I went into the registry and searched for that string. And I found it buried a few levels down in the HKEY_CURRENT_ USER hive as the data for the BackgroundHistoryPath0 key. So I simply replaced the key value with my intended fully-qualified desktop picture location.

It's been about 45 minutes since today's build 25217 was installed, and my desktop picture hasn't changed. I wasn't constantly monitoring the screen but assume that Windows did its usual malfeasance and changed the desktop image to the same image that I had there in the first place.

But I'd sure love to figure out why this silly issue happens each new build.

ArtShapiro said:

Yesterday, I decided to see if I could bypass the issue after many months of not finding a solution on the web. I looked to see if I could find the actual Microsoft picture in question. And I stumbled on it DEEP within my user directory, in a folder called "assets". It had the name of 4260523a3029726b151406b55ad75 with no extension.

Click to expand...

Welcome to Eleven Forum.

The picture you have found is a Spotlight image, they all have a long hex number as their filename. These images should normally be updated daily and kept in the folder:

%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets

It is in fact a .jpg image without an extension, take a copy of it and give it the .jpg extension if you'd like to keep it (or any other Spotlight image).


These Spotlight images can be chosen in Windows 10 and 11 to be the lock screen and sign in screen backgrounds. New in Windows 11 is that you can also have a Spotlight image as your desktop background.

How you ended up with a Spotlight image set as your desktop instead of your chosen image is a mystery, but odd bugs are the name of the game for these Insider builds.

I'll followup if anyone cares. My workaround turns out NOT to work - the desktop background is still sporadically changing back to what I'm calling the lunar scene.

The registry key BackgroundHistoryPath0 still has my intended image, so that wasn't it.

So at this point I've copied the desired image on top of 4260523a3029726b151406b55ad754604db676ac7cd1629e054b18f9fc29feaa. We'll see if that works to tame the recalcitrant Windows. I guess, if that fails, I'll remove the bleedin' file and see what happens. If images are replaced daily, as was asserted in the previous reply, then I'm probably doomed.

Well, at the risk of overstaying my welcome, I'll follow up on the followup.

There was a new Windows 11 this morning, so I was of course anxious to see if the magically-changing background picture issue had finally been quelled.

To my surprise, when it booted up after the installation, the background had changed to a solid color (green, my configured color). So I sadly changed it to another of my personal pictures, as the jpg that I usually use had disappeared from my desktop.

A subsequent reboot (necessary to reinstall Windows Home Server software after each Windows update) kept my picture, but a couple minutes later it changed back to a different stock Microsoft photo, not the lunar scene that had always been the culprit.

I changed it again, and suspect the situation is static until next weeks' update. I'm just about ready to try a bare-metal-restore of a similar machine's image - that machine is not having the problem - in hopes that I can actually activate it.