Windows spotlight voting button missing and "Some settings are hidden or managed by your organisation" due to "skip lockscreen" hack

[Guest Klaus87]

Just posting this, in case someone is having the same problem.

 

On Windows 10 with the Fall Creators Update, I was seeing spotlight background pictures on the lock screen, but while my home device would show a voting button and useful information about the picture, my work laptop would skip that part and display the password prompt.

 

Other threads suggested

 

1. Opening the Settings app
   
2. Go to Personalization > Lock Screen
   
3. Change Background from Windows Spotlight to Picture.
   
4. Change it back.
   

 

Only, this interface was also showing the error message "Some settings are hidden or managed by your organisation" and didn't allow chaging the Background setting.

 

As it turns out, in my case the problem was related to a registry hack for skipping the lock-screen. As described e.g. [1], it is possible to disable the lockscreen and instead directly display the password prompt by

 

1. Windows-Key+R, regedit.exe
   
2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization
   
3. Create a new "DWORD" value named "NoLockScreen" with a value of "1".
   

 

For me, after removing this value reenabled the lockscreen, the lockscreen before password entry was displayed again, but the voting button and information were still missing. However, it also removed the "Some settings are hidden..." message, allowing me to apply the fix mentioned above.

 

With this, Windows spotlight on the lock screen was again fully functional.

 

In my case, the registry hack had been carried over from Windows 8.1. The effect on the Settings app seems like a bug though:

 

1. The setting disables the lock-screen, but not the login prompt – so far it makes sense.
   
2. The password prompt also depends on the lockscreen settings however, so there is no reason that disabling the lockscreen should disable the lockscreen settings.
   

 

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[1] The Windows 10 lock screen can be removed to speed up the login process

 

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