Solved Down and Dirty: I Want To See The Pretty Pictures

Did you like the new themes that comes with Windows 8 Pro. I did for a while. So much so that I ran right out and downloaded as many as I could. Then when I saw the same picture more than a couple of times, I would change the theme to something else. After a while I grew tired of the themes I had downloaded because I had to go in every few days and change the theme. There weren't enough graphic images in the theme packs to keep me interested. From the many years of multi-tasking I now have a short attention span.



Got to be a better way. When I used XP I had a wallpaper changer that allowed you to select the directory where your images were kept, to use with the slide show. It would be nice if Microsoft somehow worked that into this version, wouldn't it. Well, someone over there at Microsoft must have heard us whining and did build a wallpaper changer into this version.



Instead going to the theme directory go in here: control panel\appearance and personalization\desktop background. From this window you can assign the correct directory of your images through the browse button. Fine, that's the easy part.


The thing that got me was that I had gotten quite used to the images in my image directory – I really needed to get me some new images. So generally you go out on to the Net and start grabbing images from all kinds of sources – fine, that method is time consuming – got to be an easier way.


Now if you have Microsoft Windows 8 Pro you have already done the work. You downloaded all those themes didn't you? What about those images? I suspect that you downloaded enough theme packs and installed them on your computer, to have over 600 images available for this. Just getting them and consolidating them into one directory is the question, from wherever they are hidden in Windows.



Inside the desktop background window, where it says: Picture Location. If you open that drop-down box you will find an option “desktopbackground”, if you choose that option. A selection of images will appear and above those images is the address where those images reside on your computer – that is the theme directory.



Go there and open each one and pull the jpeg files from each location and copy or move them to a new directory of your making to house those images, some place on the C:\ drive.



Once you have completed this task, then you need to go back to the control panel\appearance and personalization\desktop background window, click on the browse button and go and find the directory you created and select it as the desktop background directory.


Go back to the desktop background window and click on the “select all” button to select all the images. Then go down to the bottom left corner and set up how fast you want the images to change. Then go down to the lower right corner and click on “save changes” and you are done – well sort of...


The great thing and the bad thing about the Theme Packs is the same. While Microsoft included a installer for the Theme Packs, they also include an uninstaller, so when your theme window gets full you can uninstall to make room for new themes. That's great. However do you remember how time consuming it was to install all of those Themes? Well, if you have read a tutorial by Brink on this subject then you know it is the same time consuming task to uninstall. Got to be an easier way.


I try to streamline everything on my hard drive if I can – so I used the old fashion method. I went to the Theme Directory and deleted everything inside it – which removed all the instances of the theme packs from the theme window – those other themes that you didn't install are in a different directory and you don't need to worry about those.


Then just to be on the safe side I ran the Wise Registry Cleaner to clean out any reference to the theme packs. If that isn't good enough for you, you could of course use Regedit and clean the registry manually. Your choice. Now my desktop is all taken care of. Set the timer at 10 seconds and sit back and watch the pretty pictures.