Frequently Asked Questions

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What is Desktop Wallpaper?

Desktop wallpaper is any picture or tile that you can use instead of the regular pictures that come with Windows to display behind your icons. It is changeable and relatively easy to install. You can take virtually any image that you save from the web or create to use for your wallpaper. You can search for your favorite car, logo, animal, a cool design, or whatever your heart desires. There are literally thousands of sites that offer desktop wallpaper absolutely free for your enjoyment.

Where Can I Find More Desktop Wallpapers?

There are countless collections of internet sites that offer royalty free desktop wallpaper images that are for your enjoyment. Our best suggestion for finding these sites is to do a search in one of the major search engines like Google, Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Lycos, etc.... or, check out a few of the great links that we provide here that can get you started:

These are just a few sites. There are many, many more out there for your pleasure.

Why do Some Images Require Active Desktop to be Enabled?

Most Windows wallpaper and tiles are in a standard .bmp format. Images such as .jpeg and .gifs have to have active desktop enabled to display and view them correctly because of their color and file limitations. Active desktop, like animated images, also requires memory and processor time.

What is Active Desktop?

Active Desktop is a feature of Windows that has to be enabled to view certain wallpapers that are not quit large enough and have to be stretched.

You can make your desktop look and work like a Web page. You can display Web content directly on your desktop, and have the content updated automatically, making your desktop active. For example, you could add an investment channel or a weather map channel from the Windows Media Showcase or a page you found on the Web.

Not only do you now have many points of access to the Web from your desktop, but by adding Web content to your desktop and folders, you can personalize almost everything you see and use on your screen.

Once the Active Desktop feature is turned on, Web content is displayed or can be added to your desktop. When you right-click a blank space on the desktop and then point to Active Desktop, additional menu options also become available which enable you to customize and update desktop items.

Show Web Content turns on the Active Desktop feature.
Show Desktop Icons displays icons on the desktop.
Lock Desktop Items secures the size and location of Active Desktop items. When Lock Desktop Items is selected, Active Desktop items cannot be moved or resized.
Synchronize updates Web page content.

Can Animated Images be used as a Desktop Wallpaper?

Certainly, animations of any kind can be used as a desktop wallpaper. You can take just about any image (tiled if small) and apply it as your desktop. Just remember that the more elaborate you get with your display, the more processor time and memory you have to use to properly view it. The faster the processor and more memory you have, the better you will be able to run animated images.

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Where does Windows Store its' Background Wallpapers by Default?

C:\Windows is the usual directory where the standard Windows wallpapers and tiles are stored. Assuming that C: is the letter associated with your hard-disk and that you are running Windows 98.

You either have the option of storing you desktop wallpapers here (Beware, the more files you have in your Widows folder, the longer it takes for Windows to start-up and respond.) or you can store them in a separate folder in another location like C:\My Documents\My Wallpapers where they are convenient for you to find and apply later.

What are the Differences in Screen Resolution Sizes?

Desktop Wallpapers can often be found in different sizes. Among the most common sizes offered are 640 x 480 for some of the earlier and smaller monitor sizes, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768, to list a few. They are mainly re-sized to address the many different screen sizes of today's modern monitors while keeping in mind that some viewers still have older equipment.

What do I do if My Wallpaper doesn't Cover the Entire Screen?

If the wallpaper you select doesn't cover your entire desktop like you would want it to, simply go to your wallpaper properties box in Windows. (Right-click on the blank area of your desktop, select "Properties" and when the box appears, select the "Desktop" tab at the top. There should be an area to select whether you want the image normal, stretched, or tiled. Just click on the down arrow and scroll to "Stretched" and select it. The image should cover your entire screen.