How to change desktop background windows 10 without activation

If you have not activated your Windows 10 installation, Windows 10 doesn’t let to personalize the operating system. In other words, you can’t change the desktop background, change the accent color, change lock screen image, and access Start menu settings. In fact, most of the settings in the personalization section of the Settings app are grayed out on an unactivated installation of Windows 10.

The best way to access all personalization settings is to activate Windows 10 using a valid key or purchasing a new license. And if you’re having issues with activation, you can always contact the Microsoft support team using the built-in Get Help app. Using the app, you can have a chat with the support team and request a call back as well.

At times, when you’re unable to activate Windows 10 or when you are waiting for a solution from the Microsoft support to fix the Windows 10 activation issue, you might want to change the default desktop wallpaper to a picture that you like.

If you’re wondering how to change the desktop wallpaper on an unactivated copy of Windows 10, you will be glad to know that there is a way to change the desktop background without activating Windows 10. And the good is that we are not using any third-party software or unsupported way to change the desktop background.

Follow one of the two given below solutions to change Windows 10 desktop wallpaper without activation. Note that we here at IntoWindows in no way encourage our readers to run unlicensed version of Windows 10.

Tip: 5 ways to change wallpaper in Windows 11.

Method 1 of 2

Change desktop background from File Explorer

Step 1: Visit the folder containing the picture that you want to set as the desktop background.

Step 2: Right-click on the picture file that you want to set as the desktop background and then click Set as desktop background.

The new picture should now appear as your desktop background. As simple as that!

Method 2 of 2

Set a picture from the web as Windows 10 desktop background

Step 1: Open the Internet Explorer browser by typing Internet Explorer in the Start menu search box and then pressing Enter key.

Note that you must use the Internet Explorer browser as the new Edge browser doesn’t let you set an image as a desktop background.

Step 2: Visit the webpage displaying the picture that you want to set as your unactivated Windows 10 desktop wallpaper.

Step 3: Right-click on the image and then click Set as background option.

Step 4: Click Yes button when you see the confirmation dialog with “Are you sure you want to replace your desktop wallpaper” message.

I hope this helps!

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• How to Change the Background on Windows 10 without Activation?

By Stella | Follow | Last Updated March 05, 2021

If your Windows 10 computer becomes unactivated, there will be many limitations in the system. For example, you will be unable to change wallpaper without activating Windows. For some reason, you can’t activate your Windows 10 immediately. Then, how to change background on Windows 10 without activation? In this post, MiniTool Software will show you two simple approaches.

You can go to Settings to change the background wallpaper in Windows 10 if you have activated the system. However, if your Windows 10 is unactivated, you will receive an error message saying You need to activate Windows before you can personalize your PC. All the options are grayed out on the page. And of course, you find you are unable to change wallpaper without activating Windows.

This is one of the limitations on an unactivated Windows 10 computer. You should not feel surprised.

We believe that many of you have been bothered or are currently facing this problem: how to change background on windows 10 without activation? It is not a difficult issue. You can use some other available methods to change background on Windows 10 without activation.

In this post, we will show you two methods that can bypass the limitation and change your wallpaper without activating Windows 10.

How to Change Wallpaper without Activating Windows?

1. Use File Explorer
2. Use Web Browser

Method 1: Use File Explorer

Case 1: Use Windows Wallpaper

The Windows wallpapers are saved in the C drive (Where to Find the Windows 10 Wallpaper Location on Your PC). If you still want to use this wallpaper, you can access that folder and select your needed one to set it as the background.

Here is a guide on how to change background on unactivated Windows 10 using this method:

1. Click This PC on the desktop.

2. Go to C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper.

3. Open the folder that contains the wallpaper you want to use.

4. Right-click the image you want to set as the background wallpaper and then select Set as desktop background.

After these steps, the background wallpaper will be switched to your selected one.

Case 2: Use Your Downloaded Picture

You can also use your downloaded picture to change the background on unactivated Windows 10. The target picture should fit your computer screen.

Here is a guide:

1. Go to the folder that saves the image you want to use.
2. Right-click the image you want to use as the wallpaper and then select Set as desktop background.

You can see it is very easy to use this method to change the background on your Windows 10 computer that is not activated.

Method 2: Use Your Web Browser

Some web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer support settings your desired image as the wallpaper without downloading them to your computer.

Tip: Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge don’t support this feature. If you want to use this method, you need to switch to an available web browser.

Here is a guide on how to change desktop background in Windows 10 without activation using this method:

1. Open the web browser.
2. Search for the wallpaper on Google or some other website.
3. On the search result page, you need to right-click the target image you want to use and then select Set as background. You need to check the size of the image. If it is too small, the effect as wallpaper will not be so good. Here are some widescreen wallpaper websites: The Best 6 Widescreen Wallpaper Websites for You!

Bottom Line

Those are the two methods to change the wallpaper on an unactivated Windows 10 computer. You can just select one method according to your requirement. If you lose some wallpapers by mistake, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a free file recovery tool, to get them back.

Free Download

Should have some other related issues, you can let us know in the comment.

About The Author

Position: Columnist

Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 4 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.