Windows 10 After Creators Update Wallpaper from GPO not working

JohnnyMac

New Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2017
Hi,

We have an existing GPO that sets the desktop wallpaper of Windows 10 clients. It uses the following GPO path:

User Config >Polices > Administrative Templates >Desktop >Desktop >Desktop Wallpaper

It uses a network file share to read the *.jpg file and display it as the desktop wallpaper. This was working fine until some of the workstations updated to Windows 10 Creators update V1702 (OS Build 15063.483). Now the desktops just display a black background as their wallpaper. On the workstations that haven't been upgraded the GPO still works fine so it's not a GPO problem. We tried using a .png file instead but that didn't help. Is this a known problem with the creators update?

Thanks!
 
No but I have an output from gpresult /v:

GPO: Desktop wallpaper-Hide Music&Store
Folder Id: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\Wallpaper
Value: 92, 0, 92, 0, 112, 0, 115, 0, 98, 0, 118, 0, 48, 0, 48, 0, 56, 0, 92, 0, 83, 0, 111, 0, 102, 0, 116, 0, 119, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 101, 0, 92, 0, 68, 0, 101, 0, 115, 0, 107, 0, 116, 0, 111, 0, 112, 0, 66, 0, 97, 0, 99, 0, 107, 0, 103, 0, 114, 0, 111, 0, 117, 0, 110, 0, 100, 0, 92, 0, 80, 0, 83, 0, 66, 0, 68, 0, 101, 0, 115, 0, 107, 0, 116, 0, 111, 0, 112, 0, 46, 0, 112, 0, 110, 0, 103, 0, 0, 0
State: Enabled
 
In April and May, a similar issue was reported for the custom Lock screen GPO. I am inclined to believe it may be related, but without the ability to reproduce it over here, I am not confident of a solution at this time. At 1703 Creators Update no longer adding custom lock screen picture via GPO for Enterprise? someone reported success when creating a startup script to force copy the image to each system. As a temporary solution, you could go down this route, but it would require some scripting and quite a pain for something that should be so simple. AND, whether or not the two issues are related, I can't say for sure, but it sounds like it.

Although its obvious, you may want to check the permissions of the JPEG on the file share and make sure its accessible (readable) by everyone (and every machine for that matter).
 
Another issue that can affect personalized desktop settings (I found quite accidentally while testing W10 back in 2014) is that if you are on some kind of a network, either P2P or Domain based, you need to check if all your W10 Client machines have W10 Local Logins or they all have W10 Microsoft Store logins, or a mix of both. This particular problem exists in all versions of W10, and that is whichever machine, if you have one, that was the first W10 Client installed on your network with a Microsoft Store login has the black wallpaper and is considered to be the MASTER W10 Client machine, any and all other W10 Client machines logging into your network will have the personalized settings such as wallpaper (background) forcibly synced to all other W10 Client machines that joined the network AFTER that first W10 machine was setup or the wallpaper was changed on. If you only have 5 PCs on your network, this becomes quite easy as you only have to walk over to each machine bootup and check which one has the black wallpaper. [clearly a much bigger job if your network has 500 PCs on it!o_O] That machine is most likely the Master. Once you change the wallpaper on that W10 machine, W10 will forcibly sync all the other W10 machines which are secondary W10 client machines to now have that wallpaper--in your case the black wallpaper! Changing that wallpaper on the Master PC, say a picture of a flower which then be changed upon all network-connected W10 client PCs to a flower wallpaper as well upon syncing which can take 30 min. or more to do.

Going to any of the other W10 Client machines with a Local Login shouldn't be affected whatsoever by this change, since their personalized desktop settings are not affected or synced with any of the Microsoft Account login PCs. There are some additional variables, and since we can't see the details of your network without a Crystal Ball, you may or may not have Homegroups networking turned on or turned off on all or some of the W10 Client machines. For the most part, this personalized desktop settings syncing issue occurs on all of my home network PCs and my Customer machines also using non-domain based networks (P2P). I have found that things don't work smoothly on P2P networks that have Homegroups disabled on all PCs, so a lot of this W10 desktop settings syncing doesn't work properly. And of course, the other variable you have is if you are running any kind of a domain-based or server-based network environment (you didn't say) that runs Microsoft Server software or somesuch other such as Linux Apache web servers. If that's your configuration, adjusting the GPO settings on each PC will not likely solve your problems; it's more likely to need to be addressed on the domain-server primary PC, and also possibly with the login scripts that may be run by each of your W10 client PCs when they login to your network domain.

If we can get some more detailed information about your network environment, we can better assist you. If you're not willing to provide or share this information the above suggestions may help you to narrow things down a bit. At least you can be aware of the W10 desktop settings & accounts syncing situation if nothing else. It's been well documented on the Internet, including our forum here if you wish to google it and read through the details yourself.

Best of luck,:encouragement:
<<BIGBEARJEDI>>
 
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