Display Desktop

I was doing some checking on the photos from My Pictures showing up on the list of backgrounds and had this response and my response to that. I have looked in the Windows folder then the Web folder where backgrounds are stored and the only ones in there are the default walllpapers. Please resd these and let me know your thoughts.
Maybe this thread should go back to the Windows XP Thread.

Response to my question: Wallpaper files include My Pictures. If you do no want those images as choices for Wallpaper:

Right click on Start> Explore> My Pictures> click on right screen> File> New> Folder> name folder nowallpaper> drag images you don't want to be included in the Wallpaper to this folder.

My Response to that: I am more than confused, now. I am dumbfounded. I have never, in over 20 years, seen any file from "My Pictures" show up as available for Desktop Wallpaper which I did not request to be available by right clicking it and asking that it be set as such. On my home computer, I have around 10,000 jpg's in "My Pictures" and sub-folders and not one of them has ever offered itself up for use as Wallpaper. It would be a big job trying to locate a specific file in that tiny little featureless dialog box that serves as the gateway to wallpaper selection, it would seem to me. Perhaps there is a file association switch that controls or allows this phenomenon; something that defines where "Background Files" are located.

R-click any graphic and "Set as desktop Background" shows up.

Sounds like someone used it.
Maybe this will fix it.
Browse to C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper

R-click a graphic and use Set as desktop Background to see if that helps out.
Or you can go, Start run [paste or type in] C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper
and hit the enter key and it will open up.

I went to the folder you specified and in that folder are the standard windows desktops. None of my pictures are in this folder. I right clicked a standard wallpaper and set it as desktop and that did work.

I cannot understand how photos in My Pictures ended up in the Background Tab? I have never seen this before but people on the internet on forums I have browsing through said it has always been this way. None of my machines have ever had My Pictures in the list.

Well, my guess is some one was playing around.

That is how I fixed my mom's when she got to playing around.

There must be a solution for this somewhere? Hopefully someone out there will read this post and have an answer.

I sure hope they post a better fix.

I hope so. Thisnis driving me insane.

Can this thread be moved over to the Windows XP Forum so that it may be looked at more.

Thanks

Done.

Thank you. Maybe someone will have a solution. When I click on the desktop tab it takes a couple of minutes to open and I assume it is because of the file size of the photos. There are approx 100 files it is searching.

Somehow your wallpaperdir got mixed up.
Open regedit (Start > Run type in regedit)
Scroll to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
on the right pane is a string (REG_EXPAND_SZ) WallPaperDir
Windows will look for wallpapers in the folder mentioned in WallpaperDir.
The default value for this string is %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper

Change it manually or download and import attached .reg file (rename WalpaperDir.txt to WallpaperDir.reg)

Thanks for the reply. I am a little confused on what to do here. When I go to the regedit file I can see what you are saying. The default value is
%SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper as you said. On the very left it is called
WallPaperDir.
You are saying change it manually (WalpaperDir.txt to WallpaperDir.reg) I do not see the .txt part or .reg part of it. Can you advise.

Also you mentiond about importing the text file you attached. Where does that get imported to? and how does that work? Sorry for all the questions, I do not want to foul up my registery.
I knew there was a fix for this and I appreciate your help.

I'm sorry for not being more clear about this.
I meant to rename the value manually in the registry.

However, if the value WallPaperDir is set to %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper in the registry like you said, you can ignore my previous post.
No need to do anything yet.

The problem lies somewhere else, hopefully someone else will come up with a solution.
In the mean time I will see if I can come up with anything.

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. Do you agree that "My Pictures" should not be a folder that should be included in the DeskTop Tab? I have never see this before.

After some testing and reading, I found this is normal behaviour.

For the Background tab, Windows will look for graphic files in:
- C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper
- C:\Windows\Documents and Settings\YourUsername\My Documents\My Pictures (& sub-folders)
- C:\Windows\Documents and Settings\YourUsername\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

So the solution would be to move the graphic files to another location.