Solved Help | Where to find this transparent default User Account Picture?

Or boot from installation media and launch command prompt, regedit and load the hive

ruso said:

I have found a solution for this after hours of trying to restore the default user profile picture.

Open Registry Editor and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AccountPicture\Users

Under users you will find something like this: (Referring to each user you have actually changed the profile pic)

Code:

S-1-5-21-4256685687-1742167590-3044690774-1003

This contains pointers to 11 images, those are all the same picture you once selected as your profile picture, resized by windows.
Something like this:

Code:

Image96"="C:\\Users\\Public\\AccountPictures\\S-1-5-21-4256685687-1742167590-3044690774-1003\\{B55E58CE-3DC0-46F3-94EC-DCFAE70BFB71}-Image96.jpg

All you have to do is delete those keys. But you can't do it from there. Now close registry editor.

In order to delete them you have to download psexec (PsExec - Sysinternals) and run "psexec -i -s regedit.exe" from an elevated command prompt.

Now go back to logon screen (logout) and you'll see the default picture in back (the transparent default version).

Hope this helps someone, can't believe there's not just a restore to default button.

Click to expand...

Sorry for replying to an old thread, but I just wanted to thank you for providing the easiest solution for reverting back to the transparent photo. Was about to reset Windows until I came across your helpful guide, hopefully this can get added to the guides as I feel it should help others.

OMG YALL DONT KNOW HOW MUCH TIME I SPENT TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT
The registry editor+PSTools method worked for me
Thanks

Congratulations for joining Elevenforum. Stay tuned for more customization tricks and precious helps in your Windows 11 issues. Last customization I did was to replace the language indicator of the keyboard (EN/GR in older Windows, EN/ΕΛ in Windows 11 in my case for English US and Greek layout) with the respective country flag. You can find it at my posts, but to save you the trouble, here is the link:

After a lot of testing, I found a way to use the classic transparent/default account icon behavior on Windows 11 without resetting the entire PC.

What this does
Restores the default Windows account tile.
Fixes the blank avatar shown on the lower-left corner of the lock screen.
Shows the classic white-background user icon in the Start menu.
Removes the custom Microsoft account picture.

Step 1: Enable UseDefaultTile
Open Registry Editor as Administrator.

Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value named: UseDefaultTile

Set its value to: 1

Alternatively, run in cmd:
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v UseDefaultTile /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Step 2: Locate the User Account Pictures Folder
Open: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures
If the folder is hidden, enable "Show hidden items" in File Explorer.

Step 3: Delete user-192.png
Delete: user-192.png (move somewhere)
Do not delete the entire folder.

Step 4: Restart Windows
Restart your computer.

Result
After rebooting:
The lock screen account list should no longer show a blank avatar.
The Start menu should display the classic white-background user icon.
The profile picture will use the default Windows account tile instead of your Microsoft account image.

Notes:
This was tested on Windows 11.
Windows Updates may restore user-192.png, requiring the tweak to be applied again.
If you want to revert the change, restore user-192.png and either delete UseDefaultTile or set it to 0.

Revert Command
reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v UseDefaultTile /f
or
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v UseDefaultTile /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

This gave me a much cleaner result than having a blank avatar on the lock screen while still keeping the classic default Windows user icon.

I was testing Windows Server 2025 in a virtual machine and I could not change the default user account picture. The workaround was to rename the original picture file in User Account pictures folder and then save the desired picture with the same name. As a result every new user had that picture but I don't care. I managed to use a custom picture for my user account. No matter how Microsoft locks features, we always find a workaround to do what we want.