Aaaarrrgh - hundreds of wallpapers to choose from

[blutach]

It seems that every JPG, PNG and whatever in My Pictures and subfolders is available for selection as Wallpaper (running XP SP3).

How do I get rid of these (or even some of them) and just have the ones in Windows (other than moving them all out of the My Pictures folder)?

TIA

Regards

[doctorhardware]

I have only one that I use. It is a picture of my dog Star. That is the only one that I use. I would try renaming the folder or you might have to move the hundreds of pictures that you have. I do not think that there is an easy way.

[MilesAhead]

Do you use WMP? It's probably indexing all your media and graphics files.
For search now I use Everything

It's NTFS only and local HD only. It uses NTFS journaling info to track file system changes. Meaning it doesn't have to run through all the files on your HD all the time to find out what's up.

At least that would be my guess. The media indexing is worse in Vista than XP but I think XP may still be at it unless you disable the indexing service.

[doctorhardware]

I turned the indexing off on my laptop, it was taking to long to index the hard drive. I have a 250 gig hard drive.

[PurpleDemon]

Maybe it somehow got pointed to my pictures.

Try click browse C:\Windows\Web\Wallpapers.

That is where your defaults should be.

Good Luck

[blutach]

@burrell

Those wallpapers are also included in the list but so is every photo I have taken and stuffed into My Pix. I only want the ones in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper to appear in the list.


@Miles

Yes, I do use WMP for some file types. What can I do to get rid of these literally thousands of pix from the wallpaper? BTW: Indexing Service is disabled.

As for indexing, I use something called Filetracer, which is pretty good.



Regards

[MilesAhead]

How to set default wallpaper folder

[blutach]

Miles,

I am pretty sure that it includes C:\windows (and maybe also C:\windows\web\wallpaper) by default. And I actually want those wallpapers in my list. It's the pix in My Pictures I don't want

And that key in the registry is set to C:\windows\web\wallpaper (but still wants to include the jpegs etc in My Pictures).

For now I have taken all the pictures out of My Pictures and placed them in a different folder called Pix and put a shortcut in the My Pictures folder to Pix. That works but is not really efficient.

There must be a better way.

EDIT: I also note this thread.

Regards

[MilesAhead]

I have no idea why it would collect more than one folder. I have a folder called Wallpapers. To change the wallpaper I double click an image and it comes up in Irfanview. Then I use Set As Wallpaper command in Irfanview. Faster than using the Windows method too I think.

Photofiltre also has a menu command that will set a graphic as wallpaper.

[blutach]

It's not the ability to set a wallpaper that it getting my goat Miles, but the fact that there is 1,000 choices (from all the pix I have taken) using Display Properties.

Regards

[MilesAhead]

I know but it there's an easy work-around it may be a waste of time to fix it. It's up to you but I have no more idea why it's broken than you at this point.

edit: hmm, the only thing I could guess is maybe some software put a link in the regular Wallpapers folder to point to pictures? I dunno'. I stopped XP with SP2.
Maybe SP3 has a hard link that relays into the other folder. You could try turning off the folder view setting that says hide protected operating system files and see if it shows such a link. If that's not it, then I'm stumped. You might try Bleeping Computer XP forum.

[MilesAhead]

Les, only other thing I can think of if none of that works is read MS KB and search everything you can on "Desktop.ini" There's weird options in there. Again you have to unhide files to see those desktop.ini files.

[jm1647]

Seems this has been going on a long time, see this link from 2002.

[blutach]

What link?

Regards

[jm1647]

What link?

Regards

to me. Here it is http://www.computing.net/answers/win...per/36875.html

It happens to me too, even with pics in a subfolder under My Pictures. I'm XP Pro Sp3 and all updates.


EDIT- some more links about wallpaper files

This one shows where XP gets them from.From the link here are the locations

BMP Files from %Systemroot% folder.

BMP, JPG, GIF, JPE, DIB, PNG, HTM files from the following locations:

* %Systemroot%\Web\Wallpaper
* %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures (& sub-folders)
* %AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
* %ProgramFiles%\Plus!\Themes (& sub-folders)

If you want to clear a file from the background tab listing, move the file away from the above mentioned locations. To access each of the folders above, type the Path in Start-Run dialog.

A couple more interesting links

Here and here