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
    2010-06-21T01:30:58+00:00

    "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"

    I went to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\

    then deleted the .ini and the TranscodedWallpaper.jpg. 

    I then went back in to select my background and VIOLA!  It worked.  No need to reboot; now we'll see if is still there on reboot!

    HTH

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-05-23T00:45:17+00:00

    I think I have a similar problem, but not exactly. I have set up a theme for my computer which includes screensavers, wallpaper, etc.  And I have saved this theme and made sure that all other themes I had used previously were deleted. However, periodically (several times a day) a "default" theme shows up and takes over from my saved theme. I have repeatedly deleted this theme and resaved my current theme, but it still keeps doing it. I leave my computer on all the time. I have a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit operating system. Any help you can give me would be appreciated.

    Thanks.

    Maureen

    I have a similar problem with Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit.  When I try to personalize the colors, they don't change at all --I've tried everything I can think of to change them.  Also, when I uncheck the box to allow translucency, the Aero type colors disappear from the choices, I can only use the old style windows customization.  That would even be fine, but it still doesn't ever take effect -- I am stuck with the same original windows color scheme no matter what I do!  Any suggestions?  Thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-05-15T18:14:13+00:00

    Now I started thinking about one more thing, try this: Start > Control Panel > System and Security > Power Options > Change Plan Settings (for the chosen one) > Change advanced power settings > Desktop background settings > Slide show > you may check is it Available/Paused

    ...

    OK... lets say that something is completely wrong with this slideshow feature in Windows 7, is bugged.. whatever...

    Why...

    Not to try another way to change wallpapers. You don't even need to install additional software, because Windows has already installed it - it is called Task Scheduler (you can run it by pressing WinKey+R > taskschd.msc)

    It will be little fun with that, but this is still possible. This is the first article which I found about task scheduler and changing wallpaper: Schedule Windows XP wallpaper change without additional apps . It's little old so something might have changed. I need to look closer to it later.

    Ok thanks, this solution worked for me.

    I recently changed power plan (balanced to Power saver) in order to try to by pass a Chrome browser bug (Chrome seems to prevent PC from sleeping), and power saver plan, by default, does not allow wallpaper slideshow

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