Regardless of having activated Windows, you can also encounter this issue due to the corrupted transcoded wallpaper file, incorrect wallpaper personalization settings, and misconfigured wallpaper location in the registry editor.
1. Change desktop background from Solid to Picture
If your background is set to Solid color, your desktop wallpaper will display a black background by default. Therefore, before you try all the other methods, we recommend you check your wallpaper settings.
2. Restore Slui.exe file
Slui.exe is a Licensing User Interface that runs in the background to keep tracking the operating system activation status. However, if this file gets corrupted by the malware, your Windows could think that you haven’t activated Windows, which restricts the Personalization feature, resulting in the black desktop wallpaper. Hence, you will have to delete the slui.exe file and then try changing the wallpaper to your favorite one. Slui.exe is not a necessary process, so don’t worry about deleting the Slui.exe file because it can be restored by running the System File Checker.
3. Recreate the Transcoded Wallpaper File
Your wallpaper loads from the registry file, and then it sends to the transcoded file, which stores a wallpaper as a transcoded image to create a cache file for Windows. So Windows can load the wallpaper directly from the cache, which makes the process fast. Hence, delete transcoded file along with the cache wallpaper to create a transcoded file by following the steps. To recreate a transcoded file:
4. Configure Wallpaper Registry File
Windows takes the wallpaper location from the registry first unless it is a default Windows wallpaper. Hence, if your wallpaper location has been changed or it is incorrect from the registry editor, you will encounter this issue. Therefore, configure the wallpaper registry file by following the steps.
5. Convert Desktop Wallpaper into BMP format
The JPG format images use graphics adapters to display wallpaper on the desktop. Meanwhile, the Bitmap Image file (BMP) does not require any graphics adapter. Hence, if you have a very old graphics card or using a very low iGPU, changing the wallpaper format to BMP can fix the black desktop background issue. To change the format:
6. Change your Desktop Wallpaper manually
If you have not tried changing your desktop wallpaper manually yet, do it because it will create a new transcoded wallpaper file with a wallpaper cache. As a result, if the transcoded wallpaper file or a cache file is corrupted, your black screen wallpaper issue will fix after changing the wallpaper manually.
7. Restart your GPU Driver
The black desktop background issue can also be caused by a GPU driver crash because graphics adapters are used to display JPEG wallpapers. Hence, try restarting the GPU driver, which reloads the driver from the RAM. To restart the GPU driver, press Win + Shift + Ctrl + B together. If your screen blinks multiple times, it means your GPU driver has been restarted.
8. Ensure you have Read access to the image
In Windows, every file or folder has security that users can use to give permission to the system. If the system does not have Read permission over the wallpaper file, you cannot set it as your desktop wallpaper because Windows cannot read the wallpaper file due to not having appropriate permissions. To ensure that you have Read access:
9. Perform Clean Boot
Clean boot is a troubleshooting technique that is used to diagnose which third-party program or service is causing the issue. If you use any third-party applications, especially the wallpaper application, it is possible that third-party programs have made changes to the registry file, Group Policy Editor, and the transcoded wallpaper file, resulting in a black desktop background issue. Therefore, try performing a clean boot to disable the third-party programs and services that load at the startup. To perform a clean boot:
