Setting the Account Picture Failed: Fix It in 11 and 10
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If Windows says "Setting the account picture failed. Please try again", one question decides your fix: are you signed in with a Microsoft account or a local account? On a Microsoft account the picture is stored online, not on the PC — so change it at account.microsoft.com → Your info, from a phone if you like, and let it sync down. That routes around the failing part of Windows entirely and takes about ninety seconds. On a local account, the fix is on the machine: open File Explorer, paste %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\AccountPictures into the address bar, delete what is inside, restart, and set the picture again.
Forty minutes, with the customer watching
Jake has a habit when he sets up a laptop for somebody: he puts their own photo on the account before handing it over. It takes twenty seconds, people always smile, and it costs him nothing.
Except on this one, where Windows waited, thought about it, and said setting the account picture failed, please try again. So he tried again. Then he tried a different photo. Then he restarted. Then he was forty minutes into a five-second job with a customer sitting across the counter watching him fight a computer he had just told them was ready.
"Is it a Microsoft account?" Ethan asked, when the phone call finally happened.
"It's got their email on the sign-in screen, so yes."
"Then stop fighting the laptop. Open the browser, go to their Microsoft account page, change the picture there. It's stored online for those accounts. The PC is just a device that displays it."
It worked in under two minutes, and Jake was quietly annoyed about the preceding thirty-eight.
Which is the honest state of this error. There is a real local fault, and there is a real local fix for it, and almost every page you will find goes straight to that fix. But a large share of people hitting this message do not need it, because on a Microsoft account the picture was never really a file on their computer in the first place.
The one question: which kind of account is this?
Ten seconds, and it decides everything that follows.
Open Settings → Accounts → Your info. Under your name you will see one of two things:
| What it says | What you have | Where the picture lives |
|---|---|---|
| An email address | Microsoft account | Online, in the account. Go here first. |
| "Local Account" | Local account | On this PC only. The folder route. |
| A work or school address, with a company name | Managed account | Your employer decides. Often locked. |
That distinction did not exist in a meaningful way when this error first started appearing. Almost everybody had a local account, the picture was a file on the disk, and a broken picture meant a broken file. Now the majority of Windows PCs sign in with a Microsoft account, and the same error message covers two completely different situations.
Route A: Microsoft account — change it online
Go to account.microsoft.com, sign in, open Your info, and change the picture there.
You can do this from any device — the broken PC, another computer, a phone. That is the point: you are updating the account, not the machine, so nothing on the machine has to be working for it to succeed.
Then give the PC a moment to catch up. If it has not changed within a few minutes, sign out of Windows and sign back in, which forces it to re-read the account. A restart does the same.
Why this works when the PC will not
The Settings page on your computer does several things when you pick a picture: it reads the file, resizes it into a set of copies, writes those into a folder in your profile, records them in the registry, and — on a Microsoft account — uploads the result. Any one of those steps failing produces the same unhelpful sentence.
The website does none of that on your machine. It changes one thing in one place, and your PC downloads the result later. Every local cause is skipped.
It is worth knowing that the same split explains a family of similar errors elsewhere in Microsoft's world — our post on not being able to upload a custom picture on Xbox is the same shaped problem seen from the other side of the same account.
If the website refuses too
Then the problem is the account rather than the computer, and that is a different conversation. Check whether Microsoft is asking you to verify your identity, whether the account is in a locked state, and whether you can sign in to it cleanly in a browser at all. Our post on the "we couldn't connect to Microsoft services right now" error covers the sign-in side of this.
Route B: local account — clear the pictures folder
This is the fix that has worked since Windows 10 shipped, and it still works. It is also the right fix on a Microsoft account if you would rather repair the machine than route around it.
Getting to the folder
Press Windows key + E to open File Explorer. Click into the address bar at the top, type this and press Enter:
%AppData% is a shortcut Windows understands for the hidden settings folder inside your own profile. Using it saves you from turning on hidden files and from typing out your username, and it always lands in your profile rather than somebody else's.
Inside you will find image files with long numeric names. Those are the copies Windows made at various sizes from pictures you have used before.
Clear it, restart, try again
Select everything in the folder and delete it. Nothing important is lost — these are generated copies, and your original photos are wherever you saved them. If you would rather be cautious, copy the contents to your desktop first instead of deleting.
Then restart properly — choose Restart rather than shutting down and pressing the power button, because a normal shutdown on Windows saves part of the session and can carry the problem across. Then set the picture again in Settings → Accounts → Your info.
This alone fixes the majority of local cases, and it is the step our 2015 version of this post was built around. It has aged well.
If the folder will not let you delete anything
Right-click the AccountPictures folder, choose Properties → Security, and check that your own account is listed with at least Read and Write. If it is not, that is your fault condition rather than the pictures inside — Windows cannot write a new picture into a folder it is not allowed to write to, and the error message never says so.
If the folder does not exist at all, create it. The name has to match exactly, with no space in AccountPictures.
The cause almost nobody writes about: the photo is in OneDrive
If the photo you are choosing lives in your Pictures folder and that folder is backed up to OneDrive, check the small icon next to the file before anything else.
OneDrive has a feature called Files On-Demand that shows every file in the folder while only actually storing some of them on the disk. A file with a cloud outline icon is a placeholder: the name and the size are real, the contents are not on your computer.
Most programs handle this invisibly — they ask for the file, OneDrive downloads it, everything works. The account picture selector does not always wait that patiently. It reads what looks like an empty file and fails, with the same generic message, and you spend an hour on registry permissions for a photo that was never on the machine.
The fix takes five seconds. Right-click the image, choose Always keep on this device, wait for the icon to become a solid green tick, and select it again. Copying the file to your desktop first does the same thing.
Worth testing this before anything more involved: pick one of the pictures Windows itself supplies. If a built-in picture applies cleanly and yours does not, the problem was never Windows.
🔬 How this was tested
Checked on 9 August 2026 against Windows 11, version 24H2, build 26100, with the Settings paths walked through on that build. Windows 10 differences were kept where they are genuinely different and not invented where the two are identical.
One thing we are being straight about: this is an intermittent, environment-dependent error, and we did not deliberately corrupt a working profile to reproduce every branch of it. What we can stand behind is the ordering — the account question first, the folder second, the image and OneDrive third, policy and registry last — because that sequence is arranged so the cheap checks come before the expensive ones and a wrong guess costs you nothing but a minute. Where a step is a documented Windows behavior rather than something we watched fail, it is described as such.
When the picture itself is the problem
Modern phone photos are a surprisingly common cause, because they are the opposite of what this feature wants.
- Format. Use JPG or PNG. Photos taken on an iPhone may be in HEIC format, which the picture selector may refuse even though the Photos app opens it happily. Save a copy as JPG.
- Shape. The picture is displayed as a square or a circle. A tall phone photo has to be cropped by something, and cropping a copy yourself avoids asking Windows to do it.
- Size. Around 448 × 448 pixels is the long-standing target and still a sensible one. A 12-megapixel original is not going to be more detailed on a 32-pixel taskbar icon.
- Where it is. Copy the file to your desktop and choose it from there. Network drives, removable drives, cloud folders and paths with unusual characters all introduce ways for this to fail that have nothing to do with the image.
Thirty seconds in any image editor — crop square, resize, save as JPG to the desktop — rules this whole section in or out.
When the option is greyed out: a policy is holding it
Different symptom, different cause. If the picture controls are greyed out, or every account on the machine shows the same default image, something is enforcing it deliberately.
The setting is called "Apply the default account picture to all users". It exists so that a company can put its logo on every machine, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a company to want.
On a work or school laptop, that is the end of the road. Your employer set it, it is doing what it was asked to do, and working around a policy on a machine you do not own is not a fix — it is the sort of thing that gets noticed. Ask your IT team if it matters to you.
On your own machine, Windows Pro and above
Press Windows key + R, type gpedit.msc and press Enter. Then go to:
Control Panel → User Accounts →
Apply the default account picture to all users
Set it to Not Configured or Disabled, then restart.
On Windows Home, where gpedit does not exist
The Group Policy Editor is only included in Pro, Enterprise and Education. On Home the same setting is a registry value, which is what the policy editor writes anyway. Open Registry Editor and go to:
Look for a 32-bit DWORD value named UseDefaultTile. If it is there and set to 1, that is what is blocking you — set it to 0 or delete the value, then restart. The name is case-sensitive, and if the value is not there at all then a policy is not your problem and you should go back to the earlier sections.
On a personal machine this value usually arrives via a "debloat" or tweaking script that somebody ran once and forgot about.
The deeper causes, in the order worth trying them
Error 0x80070520 specifically
If the failure comes with this code, it means the logon session Windows was using no longer exists. That is a credentials problem wearing a picture problem's clothes.
Sign out and sign back in — a full sign-out, not a lock screen. If you are on a Microsoft account, check Settings for a prompt asking you to verify your identity, because a half-authenticated account produces exactly this. And restart rather than shutting down, for the same reason as before: a normal shutdown preserves part of the session you are trying to replace.
Registry permissions on your account's picture key
Windows records the current picture for each account under a key named after that account's security identifier. If the system account has lost its permissions on that key, the write fails and you get this message.
This one is worth knowing about and worth attempting last, because you are hunting through a long list of identifiers for the one that matches you, and the cheaper causes above account for most cases. If you do go in, export the key first, and change nothing you did not come in to change.
Damaged system files
Open an administrator command prompt and run these two, in this order:
sfc /scannow
That order is deliberate and it is the reverse of what most articles say. The system file checker repairs files from a local store, so if the store itself is damaged it reports faults it cannot fix; DISM repairs the store first. If either misbehaves, we have posts on Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service and on DISM still showing corrupted files after a repair.
A damaged user profile
Suspect this when the picture is one of several small oddities in the same account — settings that do not stick, a desktop that resets, apps that forget their configuration.
The test is quick and it tells you a lot: create a second local account, sign into it, and try to set a picture there. If it works in the new account, Windows is fine and your profile is not. That is a bigger repair with its own decisions, and our post on the User Profile Service failing to sign you in is the place to start. If you would rather roll the whole machine back to before things went odd, System Restore is the other lane.
🙋♂️ Jake's Reality Check
"Be honest. It's a photo. At what point do I tell the customer it's fine as it is and move on with my day?"
Once you have tried the account website, cleared the folder, and tested with one of the pictures Windows already supplies. If all three fail, you have learned that something in the profile is unwell — which is genuinely useful to know — but the picture itself is worth about four more minutes and no more. It changes nothing about how the machine works. On a family PC where the picture is how people find their account on the sign-in screen, push a bit further. On a machine that one person uses, the correct professional answer really is "leave it, and here's what it's telling us about the profile". Knowing when to stop is a skill too, and nobody writes that in a tutorial.
Windows 11 and Windows 10: what differs
Almost nothing, which is worth saying because guides for one version get dismissed by readers on the other.
On Windows 11 the page is Settings → Accounts → Your info, with the picture controls grouped under Adjust your photo, offering a camera option and a Browse files button.
On Windows 10 it is the same Settings → Accounts → Your info page with a plainer layout and a Browse for one button.
The folder path, the registry locations, the policy setting and the image requirements are identical. Any fix on this page works on either.
One honest note for Windows 10 machines, since it affects everything and not just this: Windows 10 reached end of support on 14 October 2025, so without Extended Security Updates it is no longer receiving security patches. Enrollment runs from Settings → Windows Update, and Microsoft extended the consumer program in 2026. The details are in our post on when Windows 10 and 11 support ends. It has nothing to do with your account picture — it is simply worth one sentence on any Windows 10 page in 2026.
Questions people actually ask about this
How do I fix setting the account picture failed?
Start by checking whether you are signed in with a Microsoft account, because if you are, the picture is stored online and you can change it at account.microsoft.com and let it sync to the PC, which skips the failing part entirely. If you are on a local account, open File Explorer, type the AccountPictures path into the address bar, delete the images inside, restart, and set the picture again. Between them those two cover most cases.
Where is the account picture folder in Windows?
It is a hidden folder inside your own profile. Open File Explorer, click into the address bar, type the AppData Microsoft Windows AccountPictures path and press Enter, and Windows will take you there without you having to unhide anything. The images Windows has saved for your account are stored there, and clearing them out is the standard first fix for this error on a local account.
Why does the picture change work on my phone but not on my PC?
Because on a Microsoft account the profile picture belongs to the account rather than to the computer. Changing it on the Microsoft account website updates it centrally and every signed-in device picks it up, so the phone is not doing anything the PC cannot do, it is simply not going through the local code path that is failing. That is why the web route is worth trying first when the PC refuses.
What image size and format does Windows want for an account picture?
A square JPG or PNG. Around 448 by 448 pixels is a sensible target and has been for years. Modern phone photos are the usual problem because they are not square, they are very large, and on an iPhone they may be in the HEIC format, which the picture selector may not accept. Crop a copy to a square, save it as JPG or PNG, and try that before assuming the system is broken.
Can OneDrive cause the account picture to fail?
Yes, and it is one of the most missed causes. With Files On-Demand switched on, a photo can appear in your Pictures folder with a cloud icon while none of it is actually stored on the disk. The picture selector reads an empty placeholder and fails. Right-click the image, choose Always keep on this device, wait for the green tick, and then select it again. Copying the file to the desktop first has the same effect.
Why is the account picture option greyed out or missing?
Something is enforcing a policy that applies the default picture to everyone. On a work or school machine that is deliberate and you cannot override it, and you should not try. On a personal machine it may have been left behind by a tweaking utility, in which case the policy setting is under Control Panel then User Accounts in the Group Policy Editor, or the equivalent registry value under the Explorer policies key.
What does error 0x80070520 mean when changing the account picture?
It means the logon session Windows was trying to use no longer exists, which is a credentials problem rather than a picture problem. Sign out and sign back in, and if you are on a Microsoft account, check that the account is not asking you to verify your identity in Settings. Restarting rather than using fast shutdown is worth doing here, because a session left over from a previous boot is often the actual cause.
How do I change my account picture on a Microsoft account?
Sign in at account.microsoft.com, open Your info, and change the picture there. It can be done from any device, including a phone, and it updates the account rather than the computer. Give the PC a few minutes and a sign-out and sign-in to pick up the change. This is the route worth trying first when the Settings app on the PC keeps refusing.
Does deleting the AccountPictures folder contents lose anything?
Only the copies of pictures you have previously used, which are cached versions rather than originals. Your original photo files are wherever you saved them and are not touched. If you want to be careful, copy the folder contents somewhere else before deleting rather than deleting outright, but there is nothing in there that Windows cannot rebuild the next time you set a picture.
Why did my old account picture come back after I changed it?
Windows keeps the pictures you have used before, and a change that fails halfway can leave the previous one showing. It also happens when a Microsoft account syncs the older picture back down over your local change. Clear the folder, set the new picture, and if you are on a Microsoft account make sure the web version matches, otherwise the two keep overwriting each other.
Should I run sfc or DISM for this error?
Only after the simpler causes are ruled out, and in the order DISM first and then the system file checker. The checker repairs files using a local store, so if that store is damaged it reports problems it cannot fix, and DISM with the RestoreHealth option is what repairs the store. For a picture that will not change, this is a later step rather than a first response, because the common causes are the folder, the image and the account.
Is this error different on Windows 11 and Windows 10?
The cause and the fixes are the same on both. The route differs slightly: Windows 11 puts it under Settings then Accounts then Your info, with the picture options grouped under Adjust your photo, while Windows 10 has the same page laid out differently. The folder path, the registry locations and the image requirements are identical, so any fix here works on either.
Can a damaged user profile cause this?
Yes, and it is worth suspecting when the picture is one of several small things going wrong in the same account, such as settings that do not save or a desktop that resets. A quick test is to create a second local account and try to set a picture there. If it works in the new account and never works in yours, the problem is your profile rather than Windows, and that is a different and larger repair.
Does the account picture matter at all, or should I just ignore it?
On a personal machine, ignoring it costs you nothing. It is worth caring about on a shared or family PC where the picture is how people tell accounts apart on the sign-in screen, and on a machine you are setting up for somebody else, where a stranger's photo or a blank silhouette looks careless. If the fixes here do not work and it is only cosmetic, walking away is a legitimate decision.
How do I remove my account picture completely?
Clear the pictures out of the AccountPictures folder in your profile and restart, and Windows falls back to the default silhouette. On a Microsoft account, remove the picture on the account website as well, otherwise it syncs back down. There is no button labelled remove in the Settings app, which is why this is asked so often, and the folder route is the practical answer.
What Jake does now
He asks the customer to sign into their Microsoft account on their phone while he finishes the rest of the setup, and they change the picture themselves from there. It takes them ten seconds, they enjoy it more than watching him do it, and the laptop picks it up by the time the machine is boxed.
"So the fix was to stop using the computer."
"The fix was to work out where the thing you're changing actually lives. Half of Windows now stores your settings somewhere other than your PC, and that's genuinely faster when you know it — you just have to stop assuming the machine in front of you is the one that's broken."
That is the shape of a lot of modern Windows errors, and this one wears it more plainly than most. The message says the picture failed. What it means, most of the time, is that one of five ordinary things is in the way — and four of them are cheaper to check than the fifth.
- Putting an account picture shortcut on the desktop
Useful on a family PC where the picture gets changed often. - When Xbox will not upload your custom picture
The same problem from the other side of the same Microsoft account. - Fixing the User Profile Service error
Where to go if the second-account test showed your profile is the problem. - The 0x8000ffff Store error
Another account-shaped error with the same underlying cause more often than not.
Revision note. Originally published 25 August 2015, updated in September 2020, and rewritten on 9 August 2026. The original fix — clear the AccountPictures folder and set the picture again — still works, and it is still the first thing to try on a local account, which is a decent innings for a one-paragraph answer written eleven years ago. What has changed is the world around it: back then almost every Windows PC signed in with a local account and the picture really was just a file on your disk. Most machines now sign in with a Microsoft account, where the picture lives online and can be changed from a phone in ninety seconds — so this version asks that question first. Added since: the OneDrive placeholder cause that produces this exact message and appears in almost no guide, the policy that greys the option out entirely, what 0x80070520 is really telling you, and the honest note that on a work laptop this may simply not be yours to change. If you hit a version of this we have not covered, write in through the contact page and tell us what the screen said — this error has more causes than one page can guess at, and reader reports are how the list grew this long.