Windows 10 occasional boot anomaly

Mark_a

On my Asus laptop I've got my Win10 Home booting the way I want (no picture, no password prompt etc) but every now and again it boots with one of the preset photos Microsoft gives you. A quick reboot almost always puts it back the way I want but I wonder if this is a symptom of something else happening such as a driver failing to boot, or some such? Or any other thing I could do to stop it doing this (which, to be honest, is pretty rare, but enough to be slightly annoying).

techquest

To set no picture on screen
StartSettingsBackgroundSelect Solid colourChoose your colourThat’s it, windows will set a solid colour instead of picture as your background and will not set a picture on restart.

If you want windows to start faster with no splash screen you can turn off W10 Splash Screen
Hit Win   R keysIn Run window type  msconfigOKSystem Configuration WindowSelect Boot tabCheck No GUI bootOKWindows will now start without a splash screen every time you start your machine.

Mark_a

Thanks, I'm aware how to do these things. My complaint is that despite it being set for a solid colour occasionally it will still throw up a picture on first boot.

techquest

What version of W10 are you running?

Start
type winver

Mark_a

1803 (OS Build 17134.829) Far as I know the latest.

techquest

We've had 1809, which had issues,  and now 1903 is the latest available version.

Windows 10 May 2019 Update is available from here:

Download Windows 10

techquest

Another method to try your background photo issue is:

Start
type regedit
Run as administrator

Navigate to following keys - note: both paths might not be there, 2nd should be

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop

Add new DWORD

right click - rename

type exactly as bellow

NoChangingWallPaper

right click on newly created DWORD

modify

0 = Allow
1 = Prevent (set the value to 1)

exit regedit

Right click on desktop and click Personalize you will see it's greyed out with a message

"Some of these settings are hidden or set by your organisation."

This will also prevent your occasional changes by windows, but it also prevents you from doing so.

To change it you would need either to regedit again or a quicker cleaner way, also if your not happy editing the registry, is to write two registry files to do that for you, which at the click or two of the mouse would allow or prevent the background changes . Let me know if you need the txt for the files and I can post it. It's simple to do in Notepad.

Abacus

It’s normally when there has been a significant update (Usually involving security) and takes a cycle to go back to the norm.

As mentioned the latest version is 1903 which seems nicely stable and should show up in Windows Update if your computer is compatible. (Just make sure you haven’t turned Windows Update off as you will run into all sorts of problems if you are blocking security updates)

Bill

Mark_a

Okay, I've used the update assistant to get me onto 1903, which all went swimmingly. The odd thing is that I have updates set to automatic but Windows insisted I was up to date, even when manually prompted to check. Weird!

I'd forgotten about four weeks ago my laptop crashed and wouldn't start at all - just a black screen with an endlessly rotating swirly thing. I had to put it into recovery and go back to a previous save point to get it going again. I assumed Windows would sort itself out with updates being set to auto, but apparently not.

Though having said all that, I don't think this had anything to do with the occasional reappearance of the boot picture as it's been doing it for as long as I've had Windows 10 so being on 1803 wasn't the problem. I think Bill's explanation of the odd security update throwing a spanner in the works as much more likely a candidate. But thanks, TechQuest for the Win update link anyway. Just curious that Windows didn't update itself as it should've, it's always done so in the past with no problem. Hopefully it's sorted itself out now.

Mark_a

Hah, wouldn't you know it - booted up this morning and first boot got the picture of the cave looking out at the beach, but for some odd reason it was violently out of focus. What the hell that means I have no idea, but a restart put it back to my normal solid blue launch screen. Which goes to show that it's nothing to do with whichever version I'm running.