A few months ago we had a guy in our office play a joke on two employees here and changed their wallpaper on their desktop. No harm done, so we though. De-selected if off of the “display” background properties and deleted the file from the HD (or so we think). The file no longer shows as an option under background, and I cannot what it is named.
The problem is that the wallpaper still comes up as the computer boots up before the windows login screen and after the desktop first goes away during the shutdown procedure.
I did a search for .jpg, .bmp, .gif and looked at all suspicious files but still can’t find it… and as I said I can’t remember the name of it or extension.
Any idea where it could be and how I can delete it once and for all?
Go to your display specs under the Control Panel and look at the “wallpaper” window. The name of the wallpaper should be there. Use the global search feature (also in the start menu) to find it and delete it. Then empty the recycle bin. Restart the computer. It SHOULD be gone.
I thought I made it kind of clear in my OP that I did this, but I guess my wording wasn’t as good as I hoped.
Did all this. No, still comes up. But!!!
It is not a regular wallpaper on the desktop anymore, nor does it even show as an option as it was deleted. It only appears as windows boots at the login screen and after you shut down (in the process of)… NOT once Windows is running. I think that has something to do with it.
What happens is that someone saves a BMP as your wallpaper, then you come along later and change it to a JPG. As your computer loads, it displays the BMP until it enables the active desktop, at which time it displays the JPG you selected and the offensive picture disappears.
Find a pic that is less offensive, and click on “save as background” is one of many ways to get rid of it for good. Choosing another background that is a BMP instead of a JPG should do it also.
I suspect that if you had a complete listing of the registry tree, you would find a key that points to it. Something like initial_wallpaper. The trouble is that the registry is very large and I don’t know how to get a listing of it. I had a situation in which the default_user was not the one I wanted and a serach of default user (and any other relevant string I could think of) in the help(less) file showed nothing helpful. Finally, I asked my son and he somehow found the appropriate registry key and I was able to edit it and change it. And I own MS’s official book on managing Win2000 and that didn’t help either.
