Users wallpaper is black, why!?

Question

Hello,

I am experiencing some issues with a user’s wallpaper. We have deployed a wallpaper as a GPO, and it shows for all users in the company except one. This user’s wallpaper becomes black instead.

In the gpresults report it shows the correct local path, where the wallpaper object has been synced according to the group policy. The only faulty thing I’ve noticed is that this user’s HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop "Wallpaper" value doesn’t exist, it’s empty – while the other users have the wallpaper path as their value. When changing this value manually for the user who experiencing these problems, the value disappears when restarting the machine.

Please help on this issue.

Answer 1

Hello @Mike Ehrmantraut ,

Please share few more observations,

1. Are you able to see the desired wallpaper on same system if you login with different user?
2. Are you able to see the desired wallpaper if you login the problematic user o different system?
3. Have you verified if the problematic user also have some other policies which are overriding the desktop policy.
4. Are you also experiencing any other issues for this user?

Regards,
Amol

Answer 2

Does the client have access to the path where the background image is saved?

Answer 3

Hello

Thank you for your question and reaching out. I can understand you are having query related to Windows background showing black.

1. First, make sure you don't have the option Show windows Background disabled in the Settings app.

Open Settings.
Go to Ease of access
Make sure the switch Show Windows Background is set to on. If not, turn on this option.

2. Check if permission is assign correctly, try if your PC is able to open the file using UNC path
3. Try to save the image as another format such as JPG and try again
4. "Enable Active Desktop" under User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Desktop\Desktop worked for me.

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