Unable to change account picture and lock screen background in windows8.1

Account picture in windows8.1
Account picture in windows8.1

It’s been a while I have been using Windows8.1 activated. I tried to change the account picture and lock screen background but to my surprise I could not change it. After researching a bit, I came to know that this issue was caused by the folder permissions issue in windows8.1. In order to change account picture and lock screen background picture the user needs to have access to “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures”. Once I knew the issue it was matter of minutes to get this done.

Please follow the below process to assign permissions to yourself in windows8.1 pro.

1. Hit “Ctrl+r” type “%programdata%\Microsoft\”
2. Select “User Account Pictures” click properties
3. Remove the “Read Only” attribute checkbox from this folder
4. Click on “Security” Tab
5. Click “edit” > It will show a new window
6. In newly shown window, Click “Add” > This will again show a new window “Select User & Groups”
7. In “Select User & Groups” window click advanced, This will again show a new window, Here click in “Find Now”
8. From the displayed search results select your “username”, If you are not sure about how to find your username it’s quite easy.

How to find username?
1. Ctrl+R
2. Type “cmd”
3. The user would be last one in the bash terminal e.g. “c:\Users\samundra>”. Then “samundra” would be the username.

9. Once user is selected, Select that user in permission window and under “Permissions for user” section “check mark” on allow for him on everything.
10. click “OK” on every window that’s been opened.
11. Now try to change the account picture and lock screen background.

Please let me know if you have any confusions on this.

Thanks,