XP Background image list issues.

Soldato
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So I decided to re-burn my install media today with my RAID drivers slipstreamed in and setup an unattended installation disc, worked great, moved 'My Documents' accross to it's own drive as per normal and then went into Display properties, clicked the desktop tab and the thing pretty much locked up for a few minutes while it went through every single image in 'My Pictures' and added it to the background list.

It's never done that before and I can only assume that something has changed somewhere, the one refrence to it I found via google was to not use 'My Pictures' for picture storage :rolleyes: Well, I've been using it for years without this issue so I'm wondering if anybody knows how to stop it from displaying the whole lot and just show the default windows backgrounds again.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, ta :)
 
Done a bunch of reading, as long as you keep images in the My Pictures folder they will show up in the wallpaper list, its just how XP works, even if they're in a subfolder it will still list them to.

So basically any images you don't want in that list shouldnt be in the My Pictures folder.

Nice of Microsoft to decide that people would really want every image they store in that folder to be listed... :rolleyes: i wonder which guy thought that idea up.... :confused:
 
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What I find weird is that it didn't do this before, I had a nice short list containing only the supplied backgrounds in XP. My registry key is the same as yours too. But the thing locked up for best part of five minutes while populating the list with all my images and I am absolutely sure it hadn't added those files in before I re-installed, that's absolutely in the category of maybe I just didn't notice... lol.

I shall be checking out every pc I can get near now just to check :)

Utter crazyness on the part M$ making it work that way in my opinion too.

Thanks for looking :)
 
Its a folder designed for storing pics, which is great, until you fill it with bundles of images and it locks up your display tab... :(
 
i think this is just a screwy install. never seen this happen before. it's certainly not meant to happen. :p

when i used xp, i used to re-direct "my documents" in the same way and i stored my own images in "my pictures" and they never showed up in desktop properties. :)
 
I did a search on my registry key and found that mine says "\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper".

I think that there is something that you can do to stop your 'My Pictures' folder being listed under the Display options tab.
 
Images in the 'My Pictures' folder are suppose to show up in the desktop tab, it's done by design, and there currently isnt any documentation of any way to disable that feature.
 
Ok, machine at work does not exhibit this behaviour, it has some 600 images in 'My Pictures' and they do not show in the list. Both systems running XP Pro.
 
This is not normal XP behaviour. I have installed hundreds of systems running XP and have never seen this before.

Every system i have seen has a list of images from WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper.
 
katana6434 said:
This is not normal XP behaviour. I have installed hundreds of systems running XP and have never seen this before.

Every system i have seen has a list of images from WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper.

All the systems have the list of images from WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper in them as well, just some systems show only those and others show those plus the contents of 'My Pictures'
 
I've cleared out the web/wallpaper folder on my PC, but i have 2 images listed, anyone care to take a guess where the images are?....
 
On the PC that doesn't do it, try browsing for an alternative image.

See if it does it afterwards. :D
 
ns400r said:
On the PC that doesn't do it, try browsing for an alternative image.

See if it does it afterwards. :D

I don't see that it will make any difference as the system that does do it was a fresh install, will try it though just to see what happens.
 
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