Windows Spotlight lock screen picture won't change

Hello,

I have an HP laptop running Windows 10, and usually when my laptop is locked, the picture changes every now and then on my lock screen and I really enjoyed that. But recently for the past month or two, it's been stuck on the same picture and it stopped changing to new pictures. I checked my settings and I still have "Windows Spotlight" set as my lock screen but still nothing happens. It just stopped working and changing pictures for some reason.

If anyone can help, please do!

Same problem with W10 Pro 64-bit

Best workaround I have found so far is to download your favourite Spotlight pictures from this freely available (incomplete but growing) collection:

http://getwallpapers.com/collection/windows-spotlight-wallpapers

and then set up your lock screen to be sourced from the downloaded picture(s) instead of from Spotlight.

W10, of course, can't help replacing your lockscreen with a blank if you actually sign out for another user (as distinct from locking the screen), but that's easily fixed by e.g. restarting.

The wonderful snowy owl picture isn't (yet?) among the collection, but I found that here:

https://spotlight.it-notes.ru/images/d1b63893076a1030a90fb8d03a20f0bd

Maybe MS will get bothered enough by its naff image to do something about its disappearing spotlight pictures, its disappearing calculator, its disappearing Microsoft Store and its disappearing hardware troubleshooting facility... 

Maybe

By now you may have come to my own conclusion: Life's too short to mess around 'under the hood'.  Hopefully MS will view this endless set of breadcrumbs and induce some consistency in the underlying code.  I still get the intermittent 'Gloomy Cave' and 'Gloomy Scottish Loch ..." , igniore them and, hey presto, next boot and they've gone.  Weird.

Last week it worked a few days after trying both methods but today it reverted back to the same picture and Spotlight doesn't change?

Just follow these steps of Windows Central:

How to fix Windows Spotlight Lock screen errors Is Windows Spotlight broken or stuck on the same image? If so, this guide details the steps to fix the issue.

Windows Spotlight is a feature included with Windows 10 that uses Bing to automatically download and set new background images on the Lock screen, to keep your experience fresh every time you sign in.

The only caveat with Windows Spotlight is that sometimes it will stop working, or you'll notice that it gets stuck on the same image. Unfortunately, Windows 10 doesn't include an option to reset this feature. However, it's possible to fix the Windows Spotlight settings with this simple workaround.

In this Windows 10 guide, we show you the steps to fix Windows Spotlight on your computer and keep getting fresh images from Bing on your Lock screen.

How to reset Windows Spotlight

If the Windows Spotlight feature is stuck on the same image, or it's not working at all, you can use the following steps to fix the issue:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Personalization.
3. Click on Lock screen.
4. Under "Background," make sure Windows Spotlight is NOT selected and change the option to Picture or Slideshow.
5. Use the Windows key + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run command.
6. Type the following path and click OK. %USERPROFILE%/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState\Assets
7. Select all the files (Ctrl + A) and hit the Delete key to clear all old images (if applicable).
8. Use the Windows key + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run command again.
9. Type the following path to where the Windows Spotlight settings are stored and click OK. %USERPROFILE%/AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager_cw5n1h2txyewy\Settings
10. Right-click settings.dat and roaming.lock individually, then click Rename and name them settings.dat.bak and roaming.lock.bak.
11. Restart your computer.
12. Open Settings.
13. Click on Personalization.
14. Click on Lock screen.
15. Under "Background," make sure to enable Windows Spotlight.

Once you complete these steps, you can lock your PC (Windows key + L), and the Lock screen should show new Bing images.

If everything worked as expected, remember to go back to the Settings folders where Windows Spotlight stores the settings and delete the settings.dat.bak and roaming.lock.bak files.

Alternative method to fix Windows Spotlight

If the steps mentioned above didn't fix Windows Spotlight, you can try to reset the settings using the following steps:

1. Open Settings.
2. Click on Personalization.
3. Click on Lock screen.
4. Under "Background," make sure to enable Windows Spotlight. (If you don't enable the feature, you're likely to get an error while running the PowerShell command.)
5. Open Start.
6. Search for Windows PowerShell, right-click the result, and select Run as administrator.
7. Enter the following command and press Enter to reset the Windows Spotlight: Get-AppxPackage -allusers *ContentDeliveryManager* | foreach {Add-AppxPackage "$($_.InstallLocation)\appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -register }
8. Restart your computer.

After completing these steps, you should be able to lock your PC (Windows key + L), and the Lock screen should show new Bing images.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-windows-spotlight-stuck-same-image-windows-10?passport=1526946645

No, neither of these steps worked. This follows a pattern which for me makes Windows 10 (generally a great OS) so naff. The humble calculator vanishes after using it a few times. The Microsoft Store, which you would think Microsoft would be motivated to keep up, has always been unavailable, even when signed in to Microsoft. The OS won't recognise an SD card, and the hardware troubleshooting facility has vanished from Windows 10 so there's no way of tracking down the problem.  And now the ability to show new lockscreen images, not rocket science you would think, has vanished also, and (as usual) advice from Microsoft on how to fix it doesn't work either - for me, at any rate. If anyone can provide useful info on ANY of these problems I would love to hear it. And BTW, advice to completely reinstall Windows 10... forget it.