No account picture showing on Start10 menu

What version of Win10?  Insider?

What do you see when you use the Windows 10 style (default) menu?

I'm using regular Windows 10 Professional x64.

When I select the Windows 10 style menu I can see my account picture indeed:

Too bad I'm not fond of this menu's style...

So I was finally able to log into your broken support system and found out that my ticket is indeed there, but has no one assigned to it (even though it's 3 days old)

So are you guys going to look into this anytime soon, or should I just buy a copy of StartIsBack?

Start10 asks the OS to provide the image, but if this fails it will fall back to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp

Have you changed anything about your account recently?  Is it a local account, domain account or Microsoft online account?

'but has no one assigned to it (even though it's 3 days old)'

Because you placed it on a weekend...  It takes some time to catch up from those no-work days for us.

I haven't. It is a local account, and the picture C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp exists on my system: 

As you can see it is not a blank, black picture as Start10 is showing:

Since the Windows 10 style menu shows my picture correctly, I don't see why the modern style that I prefer to use can't.

Fair point, but I placed it on a Sunday, and it's Wednesday today.

I just uninstalled Start10 completely, removed all remaining files from my profile folder and cleaned all Stardock and Start10 entries from the registry. After that I rebooted my PC, and the regular Windows menu showed my account picture perfectly. I reinstalled Start10 after that and the black account picture is still there.

Can you post a link to your user picture here?

Sure:

http://i.imgur.com/eBacnSZ.png

So you guys are closing my support tickets now. Nice. And what exactly have you done to consider the issue closed, if I may ask?

I think the support system considers tickets closed if they have not had a reply within X days.

Regarding your issue, the PNG image worked fine here so it isn't a problem with the image itself.  Clearly something has changed on your setup which has stopped it working at all as it was working and as you say nothing should have changed.  For the 1.53 update we can modify Start10 to detect the image is fully black and swap to the default in that scenario.

In the short term you could switch to the non user icon version of the modern theme which would hide the icon for now until we do an update.

And what would that be? What exactly could affect your software in such a way? If it was so clear I wouldn't have contacted you about it, trust me. My account picture is showing perfectly everywhere else but in Start10: native windows start menu, windows lockscreen, windows login screen... it even works fine with classicshell's classic start menu. As far as I am concerned, it is something in your software that's not finding the correct image to display and is showing a blank image. You even said the default behavior would be to show the default picture and not a blank. And my default account pictures are exactly where your software is supposedly going to look for them:

So unless you prove to me that the problem is on my end, my money is on this being as a bug in your software, and not user error.

In the meantime, can't you add a custom account picture option, like the guys at classicshell did with their start menu replacement?

Quoting anacondo76072, reply 13

Quoting Neil Banfield,

reply 12

Clearly something has changed on your setup

And what would that be? What exactly could affect your software in such a way? If it was so clear I wouldn't have contacted you about it, trust me. My account picture is showing perfectly everywhere else but in Start10: native windows start menu, windows lockscreen, windows login screen... it even works fine with classicshell's classic start menu. As far as I am concerned, it is something in your software that's not finding the correct image to display and is showing a blank image. You even said the default behavior would be to show the default picture and not a blank. And my default account pictures are exactly where your software is supposedly going to look for them:

Reduced 56%

Original 1064 x 220

So unless you prove to me that the problem is on my end, my money is on this being as a bug in your software, and not user error.

In the meantime, can't you add a custom account picture option, like the guys at classicshell did with their start menu replacement?

 

End of anacondo76072's quote

It isn't much of a stretch to say that if it worked for a year and then broke then clearly something changed.  I am not saying what changed (other than it would be something on your computer if you have not updated the Start10 software), and I am not saying it is user error, just that something changed, hence the change from the icon to black...

The usual location used for the picture is

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\YOURUSERNAME.bmp

If it fails to load it suggests the image has been deleted by something.  I would be curious to know if the file remains there or not and if you can read it.

To resolve this issue, try the following as a test:

Put a picture here (or if the temp\YOURUSERNAME.bmp if the above file does not exist)

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp

You will then need to sign out and sign in again.

Does this help?

Neil,

I don't know if you had the chance to talk to Sean Drohan, who suggested to me via email to create a new admin account and see if Start10 showed its account picture correctly. It did:

Now, regarding my current account, I looked for those pictures and they were indeed not there. So I proceeded to convert my PNG account picture to BMP and stored a copy in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\YOURUSERNAME.bmp and another in C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp, as you suggested, and performed a reboot. And it worked! But here is where this gets interesting again: it only worked the 1st time I clicked on the Start10 menu. The 2nd time, it showed the black picture again, and it won't show my account picture again until reboot/re-logon.

So I promptly opened an explorer window to see if the pictures I had just copied were still there, and to my surprise they are, both in Local/Temp and in Local/Microsoft/User Account Pictures.

As I told Sean via email, this is a recent install of Windows and the only big recent update this system has seen is the anniversary update, but Start10 was working perfectly after that. And to be on the safe side, I ran the sfc /scannow command and that didn't help either.

Here's the recording:

I also have this same issue.  Any resolution on this?

Brent

I am having the same issue.  Any fixes?  I am using the latest version of Start10 1.6.1

This is very frustrating.

Ken, there are a few suggested fixes here (Neil's and creating a new admin account for a couple).  What have you tried and see fail?

----------------
Sean Drohan
Stardock Customer Service Manager

I have tried everything suggested so far.  

I also see the C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\YOURUSERNAME.bmp file.

I try replacing it with another but Start10 keeps replacing it.

My issue is slightly different but the same.  My user profile does not have ANY picture associated with it.  In EVERY Window 10 setting/screen you can see there is no picture associated (which is correct).  You only see the standard silhouette character.   And when I see Start10 "Windows 10" style it is also correct.  But if I set it to "Windows 7 Style" or "Modern Style" it displays a picture.  Where does Start10 get this from?  My "%userprofile%\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\account pictures" is empty as expected.  My "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures" has the default pictures.

My "C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp\YOURUSERNAME.bmp" keeps showing up (wrong picture).  If I try replacing it with say C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bpm (but renamed to my account name.bmp).  It keeps getting replaced.

So, Start10 must be getting this from somewhere??  Can you tell me where the program looks (disk or registry) and I can see if I can find it?

I guess I am confused, ken - You do, or do not, want the picture to show for any of the Start10 menu styles?

My account does NOT have a picture associated with it.  But Start10 is displaying a picture in those modes.  So I do not want a picture displayed because there should be one..