Disable the ability to change the lock screen background in Windows 8By Lawrence Abrams on October 19, 2012 | Last Updated: December 18, 2012 | Read 6,967 times.If you find the Windows 8 lock screen to be annoying and just a waste of time, it is possible to disable it via a policy in the Group Policy Editor or via a Registry key. When disabled, instead of showing the lock screen when you lock your screen, it will show a login prompt. To access the Group Policy Editor in Windows 8, you should type Group Policy in the Start Screen and then click on the Settings category. The option for Edit Group Policy should now appear. Click on the Edit Group Policy option and the Group Policy editor will open. Under the Local Computer Policy, expand the tree to the following path:
When you see Personalization, left click on it to select it as shown in the image below.
In the right-hand pane you should now see a variety of settings. Double-click on the Prevent changing lock screen image setting and its properties screen will open.
Select the Enabled radio button and then click on the Apply button. Finally click on the OK button and close the Group Policy Editor. Windows 8 will no longer allow you to change the lock screen background. If you want to enable this feature in the future, just go back to the same setting and change it to Not Configured. If you are not using Windows 8 Professional or Enterprise you will not have access to the Group Policy Editor. Instead you will need to enable the setting through the Windows Registry. This setting can be enabled by creating the NoChangingLockScreen REG_DWORD value under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization Registry key and setting it to 1. If you do not feel comfortable editing the Registry, you can download this Registry file that will disable the ability to change the lock screen image for you:
Just download the above Registry file and double-click on it. When it asks if you wish to merge the data, click on the Yes button. If you want to enable the the ability to change the lock screen image again in the future you can download and run this Registry file:
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