Unable to change background Windows 7 Home Premium

Anonymous
2009-11-27T19:00:12+00:00

**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).

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Accessibility

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Anonymous
2009-12-01T10:31:14+00:00

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

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Anonymous
2009-11-30T19:30:10+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2009-12-16T17:57:02+00:00

    Just for the record, the update from me since my post on 4th December above is that I have tried deleting the .ini file content and the TrancodedWallpaper.jpg and this did not work for me. Remember my symptoms are that slide show wallpaper changing works fine until the change period lasts longer than the time the PC is powered up (i.e. until the next day), then it gets stuck.

    Performing the above had the effect that the next power up had a black screen for wallpaper. Reconfiguring the theme and saving resulted in a new Transcodedwallpaper file and text in the .ini file, and the same problem with a stuck background.

    I also tried the trick suggested of setting up a new admin account and copying the contents of the theme folder (i.e. the above 2 files) to my username, but this did not work either.

    I find it odd that more people are not reporting this problem. I have a pretty standard install. Guess I could log the problem with Microsoft.

    When trying to think what I could have done since the changer working fine every day and suddenly not working, I had a brainwave that this might have been adding a couple of desktop gadgets - the clock and a BBC Radio player. However, removing these has had no effect either.

    Back to the drawing board!

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  2. Anonymous
    2009-12-16T18:25:34+00:00

    Performing the above had the effect that the next power up had a black screen for wallpaper. Reconfiguring the theme and saving resulted in a new Transcodedwallpaper file and text in the .ini file, and the same problem with a stuck background.

    Nothing strange that after removing .jpg file and rebooting you got black screen. TranscodedWallpaper.jpg contain image which is already displayed.

    hmm...

    In cases reported previously something wrong happened to the .ini file. After setting a slideshow it was.. I don't know.. overweighted? and has effect with stucked background. Windows was unable to read it again and couldn't go to the another background. Removing only .ini file gave possibility to deal with that problem. Windows didn't need to read the .ini file so something pushed all this forward and people were able to change wallpaper.

    You said that after trick with .ini file you reconfigured theme. Did you use exactly the same theme (exactly the same pictures for slideshow) what previously? Remove content of the .ini file and this time try another theme, and see does another slideshow theme can work....

    Yesterday someone reported that removing .ini file didn't help him (Can't change.. - last message ). He had some default wallpaper with preinstalled operating system and he couldn't get rid off that. But... he replaced the TranscodedWallpaper.jpg with another picture with that same name TranscodedWallpaper.jpg. And again.. the problem was resolved.. replacing the .jpg file pushed things forward.. It looks like there was some problem with that one single picture.

    What I'm trying to say... The problem might be also related to some picture used for slideshow. Try another slideshow, so you will be able to jude does the problem has global effect or maybe it is only related to that one theme.

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  3. Anonymous
    2009-12-16T23:04:18+00:00

    My thoughts exactly Gregorz, and I was not surprised to see the black screen. When I say reconfigured, I simply meant reselcting the same images, setting period to 1 day, and saving/naming the theme again. There cannot be anything wrong with the images for two reasons:

    1. They will cycle fine for any period prior to the PC being switched off. The images are not getting stuck as such. It just seems the PC can't count up to a whole 24 hour period if the PC is turned off.
    2. They were changing daily when I first installed Windows 7, but after a few weeks this suddenly stopped. I may well have installed a few final bits of software in that time, but I certainly did not change the images. they are just straight-forward jpg files. It doesn't matter which of my 10 or so images it stops on, they all behave the same if period is set to 1 day.

    I reckon when the change period extends beyond the time the PC is powered up, it must save the expected time of change or something similar in the ini file on shutdown. Clearly this is encoded in some way as there is nothing obvious in there (talk about the opposite of defensive programming - make it really obfuscated so nobody can figure out what is going on!). My guess is this bit is either getting corrupted or it is not being read when the PC powers up again for some reason.

    Because I am looking for a 24 hours cycle, anything I try to rectify the problem takes a little while to check. I will continue to try all suggestions though.

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