How to delete old photos from Windows 10 lock screen history

As we know, Windows 10 allows users to customize the look of the lock screen with personalized images in Settings app.It will also remember the last five images you used.If you feel like you don't like any of the default images in history, or want to create a new image, you can remove the old images from the list of suggested images.

Your lock screen image history in the Settings app will display five images that Windows has randomly selected from a hidden folder on your system.These images include any images you previously used to make lock screens.

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By default, Windows will display the five most recently used images, so you can add new images to push the old images out of the list of proposed images.But the problem is that the images will still exist in the folder containing the lock screen image and sometimes Windows will be confused between these images, resulting in the inability to display the most recent images.However, there will still be a way to delete these images, but it will take a little more time and take a few 'specialized' steps.

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The first step involves finding the correct directory where the images you want to delete are stored.Windows stores all these images in the following location:

 C: ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsSystemDataUser_Account_Security_IdentifierReadOnly 

The User_Account_Security_Identifier section of this path will not be the same because each user account on the computer has a different Security Identifier (SID) identifier.To find your security identifier, activate Command Prompt or PowerShell and type the following command at the prompt:

 whoami / user 

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Note: The security identifier will be much longer than what is shown in the illustration above.The code in the image has been nearly covered because this is a security identifier.

Now comes the second step.This step will be a bit more complicated, pay attention!Once you have obtained the security identifier, you can navigate to the folder containing the image to delete.However, this System Data folder will be protected by Windows.When you try to open it, you will see Windows send this message:

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And if you click the Continue button on that message, you will receive the following message as follows:

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To solve this problem, you will need to own the Data System folder (and while you do so, make sure you select the option to replace all child object permissions. so you can also own subfolders).Refer to the article 'Fix bug' you need to allow this action 'in our Windows 10, 8.1 and 7' to know how to take ownership of a folder in Windows, then continue to the next step .

Now that you know the folder containing the images you want to delete and you have taken ownership of the System Data folder, things will become much simpler.Open that folder and you will see some subdirectories inside.Open a subfolder that matches your security identifier and then open the ReadOnly folder within that subdirectory.

Now, you will see a series of folders with names starting with 'LockScreen_' and ending with different letters.

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Open any of those items to check the image inside.Each folder will contain four images with the same content but at four different resolutions, including an original version and three thumbnails.Click on any folder to make sure it's the exact image you want to remove.

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After you have determined that this is exactly the image you want to remove, back it up to the ReadOnly folder and delete the folder containing the images you don't want to keep.If you want to delete all previous lock screen images, continue and delete all folders 'LockScreen_x'.

Those are all the steps we must take.After you delete the images from this folder, they will disappear from the history in Settings app.You may need to close and reopen the Settings app to have the application update the changes.Windows will only display its default images on the Settings page and will create additional folders in that SID folder when you add other lock screen images.

Good luck!

See more:

1. Turn off Windows Defender on Windows 10
2. How to turn off Windows Update on Windows 10
3. How to do, customize in the article will help your Windows 10 "as fast as the wind"
4. Ways to troubleshoot audio on Windows 10