Nothing is broken, and nobody has infected your PC. The big Windows feature updates reinstall parts of the Windows experience layer as they go, and personalisation choices like lock screen suggestions can quietly return to their defaults in the process. Here is why it happens, and the short routine that puts your settings back - faster every time you do it.
This is the most common follow-up to the first fix: it worked for months, an update happened, the ads returned. The pattern is real and it has a boring explanation. A feature update is not a patch; it is a new version of Windows installed over your old one, and the new version ships with its experience features - Spotlight, suggestions, tips - switched on. Your files, apps and accounts survive the upgrade carefully. Some of your preference toggles do not. The fix is to reapply them, and to make reapplying a five minute habit instead of a fresh investigation.
An example of the well-known pattern - a side effect of how feature updates install, not a new fault on your PC.
A feature update performs an in-place upgrade: Windows Setup lays down a fresh copy of the operating system and migrates your data and settings into it. Most settings migrate faithfully. But the migration is also where Microsoft re-asserts the shipping defaults of the experience layer - and Spotlight and the suggestion switches live in that layer. Security updates, the monthly kind, almost never do this, which is the useful diagnostic: if the ads returned, look at whether a version changed recently - Settings will show a new build - not just whether Tuesday happened.
Five minutes is generous once the list is familiar. Most of the frustration people feel comes from re-deriving the fix from scratch; the list abolishes that.
The other suspect is your own account. If you sign in with a Microsoft account on more than one PC, Windows can sync personalisation preferences between them - including an old lock screen choice from a machine you have not cleaned up yet. Check in Settings then Accounts then Windows backup, where preference remembering can be reviewed and, if it keeps fighting you, switched off for personalisation. Set your preferred state on every PC once, and sync stops being an undo machine and starts keeping your choice consistent instead.
Two ways to make the next round effortless. The low-tech one: a one page note - in a notebook, a text file, wherever you keep such things - listing your switches: background Picture, fun facts off, status None, the cousin toggles you use. The creator's way: this is precisely where the video's one click script earns its keep long-term. Re-running it after a feature update rewrites its lock screen settings in seconds. You read it once, carefully, the first time - the script safety page shows how - and afterwards it is a known tool, not a new download to evaluate each time.
Three other patterns get mistaken for the update effect. A new user account on the same PC starts from defaults, because these settings live per user - the fix must be applied inside that account too. A managed office PC can have defaults re-applied by policy on schedule, which is the policy doing its job. And on a shared family PC, another person's idea of a nice lock screen may simply differ from yours; separate accounts give each person their own settings and end the tug of war.
The video's script is at its most valuable here - one click after each big update instead of a settings expedition. Watch it once, keep the file, and the cycle stops being annoying.
▶️ Watch Full VideoRarely. Monthly cumulative updates patch the existing Windows version and generally leave your preference settings alone. The resets are associated with feature updates - the version upgrades that arrive roughly once a year in current Windows 11. If the ads returned, checking whether your build number changed will usually confirm which kind of update just landed.
You can delay them, and on managed editions pause them for a while, but refusing them permanently is a bad trade: feature updates carry security support, and older versions eventually stop receiving patches at all. Reapplying a handful of settings twice a year is cheaper than running an unsupported Windows.
Yes - reapplying known settings is exactly what a settings script is for. Read it thoroughly once, keep the same file, and re-running it after an update is a deliberate, informed action. What you should not do is download a fresh copy from a random site each time; keep the file you already checked.