Unable to change background Windows 7 Home Premium

Anonymous

**Original Title**

Windows 7 Desktop Background Picture won't change. Was working fine, changing everyday, then one day, stopped changing and now stuck on the same picture for 2 weeks.

The desktop backgrounds were working fine (previous 2 weeks ago), picture would change everyday. I downloaded all the other themes (ex. Brazil, China, Spain, etc.). At first these other themes worked fine and then all of a sudden, the desktop background picture won't change.

Another problem: under "Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization" window, when I click on "Desktop Background" link or icon on bottom left and the picture locations are displayed, I can't check or uncheck pictures. When I try to clear all check marks or select all check marks, they seem to disappear (the check marks) randomly and then reappear randomly. Sometimes some check marks will stay and then others will disappear despite selecting "Clear all" or "Select all" (doesn't matter which) and seemingly random pictures are selected or deselected in no particular pattern. And then I tried manually selecting and deselecting each picture check mark and same thing, check marks would randomly stay or else disappear.

Bottom line is I am unable to change anything in "Desktop Background". And I have had the same background picture for 2 weeks unable to change it. Have clicked on every button or drop down menu like "Change picture every:" to 10 seconds, 30 seconds, etc. and still nothing.

I tried finding a work around solution like right clicking on different pictures in Windows Explorer and selecting "Set as desktop background" but literally nothing happens. I tried viewing several pictures in "Windows Photo Viewer" then right click on "Set as desktop background" and then an error pops up "This image can't be set as wallpaper. An internal error occurred."

I have all the latest windows updates. I haven't tried anything in safe mode because I really don't know windows 7 and safe mode turns the desktop background off, anyways, doesn't it? Don't really want to do a system restore for something so small or re-install. Please advise other things I can try!

Should also mention I tried deleting all the additional themes I downloaded to see if these caused problems... and yes I used antivirus and spyware several times (using "Shaw Secure" made by F-Secure). Still same problem. Also scanned with Ad-Aware (although had to turn off F-Secure to do this). Still nothing wrong.

It's a small problem I can live with but also annoying.

Should also mention this is a brand new pc with Windows 7 installed on it (no other OS was installed on it).

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Anonymous

should be noted that when you delete the content in the .ini file you need to reboot

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Open this with Windows Explorer: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\ and tell me what you see?

When choosing only one image for the desktop background there should be only TranscodedWallpaper.jpg and the slideshow.ini should be empty. Is there something inside the .ini file? Maybe it would be possible to force some changes removing the content of the .ini file

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143 additional answers

Anonymous

2009-12-06T14:23:03+00:00

I had the same problem, and the path that you noted helped me find the answer. I had downloaded a few more themes from Windows, and when I used the path, %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\ I found the picture that had not changed from my desktop in the theme folder. It was called transcoded wallpaper, and next to a slideshow icon. I deleted the transcoded wallpaper, and was able to change desktops. Note, that when you select another wallpaper, it will show up as the transcoded wallpaper. I guess that is normal, but for some reason, this one desktop just stuck and refused to leave. Maybe it was because I kept that particular picture on an external hard drive just in case my machine crashes. Maybe there was just enough of a hard drive delay to screw the system up.
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Anonymous

2009-12-07T14:50:57+00:00

Hey, that worked! Though, my .ini file had nothing in it, for some reason, deleting both files unblocked whatever was keeping the backgrounds from changing.

Thanks!

-Topher
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Anonymous

2009-12-11T05:28:38+00:00

thanks to everyone, this is how i fixed my problem:

I went over to the link as somebody suggested:

http://danielpalmarin.edublogs.org/2009/12/01/catalyst-9-11-windows-7-bugs-fix/

created a new administrator profile as it said.

Logged on the new user profile, and the background there was working just fine, but obviously, all my settings were gone from my original administrator profile.

I didn't want to delete my old administrator profile as the link suggested cause I had that account setup like wanted it, and well, i figured i might try to salvage it, so Still logged on to the new administrator profile, I navigated to the following path:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

I copied the themes folder, moved it to the desktop of the new administrator profile, and from there, I zipped the themes folder and emailed it to myself. I could have put it on the usb drive, or put it on my network, but I was not at home when doing this, so emailing was the easiest solution at the time...

So then I logged on back to my old administrator profile. Downloaded my zipped themes folder.

I then navigated to the same path as before, but this time in the old administrator profile:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

I deleted the themes folder there, and unzipped my themes folder from the new administrator account I had previously created, and voila, background is working again!!!!
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