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Desktop background stretch/tile/center fails
In the past week, I've noticed my chosen desktop background (a personal jpeg photograph) scrolls onto the desktop fairly slowly whenever I return to the desktop. It used to appear quickly all at once.
I right clicked a blank space on the Desktop, selected Properties to bring up the Display Properties window and selected the Desktop tab. If I select a bmp file from the list provided (they're stored in C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper), it will not display. If I select a jpg file (or I browse to MY Pictures and select a jpg), it will display. This distinction betwen bmp and jpg files never happened before.
In addition, selecting a Position option (stretch, center, tile) changes the display of the picture in the tumbnail in the Display Properties window, but doesn't change the display on the actual desktop even if I click the Apply button.
I checked where Windows XP stores the file it displays on the desktop (C:\Documents and Settings\Rick\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\wallpaper1.bmp) and it does change to be whatever jpg file I had selected in the Display Properties window.
Any suggestions for what's wrong and how to fix it?
Am running the up-to-date anti-virus software that came with this Dell-XPS200. I also use SpyBot. Operating system is Windows XP Media Edition with automatic updates. Altho I use Firefox, I did allow Internet Explorer 8 to be downloaded.
Thanks
Rick
BMorearty
2 Posts
0
February 10th, 2009 08:00
Hi Rick
I don't know how to solve the problem you're having with changing the background, but I can tell you why the background scrolls onto the desktop slowly whenever you return to the desktop. Your system is running out of memory so it swaps out the desktop background to the disk to make more memory for the programs that are running. When you return to the desktop it has to read the background back from disk. This is slow.
To remedy this you can run fewer programs simultaneous, or perhaps stop running some new program you have that uses a ton of memory, or buy more memory.
Brian
jak68
2 Posts
0
April 12th, 2009 00:00
rick - it appears that ie8 breaks the active desktop (which in turn breaks the display of the background wallpaper), and the solution seems to be to disable active desktop in the registry. This worked for me when i saw the same problem after downloading ie8. See links below:
http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/windows-xp-tablet-pc-newsgroup/295454-desktop-background-image-does-not-display-correctly.html
http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/508/