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Where is the desktop background stored?

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:26 am
by battye
When you right click an image (in Firefox) on Windows XP and set it as your desktop background, where does the image save to?

Cheers

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:03 am
by Layzie Bone
Try this?

where username is the windows user account name

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Roaming\Firefox\

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:54 am
by battye
Thanks wanabe, it was saved as a .bmp file in the Firefox/ folder.

Cheers :mrgreen:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 12:15 am
by Layzie Bone
Not a problem at all, IE also stores the background in the roaming folder as well....that what gave me a hunch :wink:

Re: Where is the desktop background stored?

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:58 pm
by battye
Here is the follow up story. :)

Not long after I posted this question, I saved the image into My Documents (I think). Fast forward over a year (to earlier this year), and I had to reformat my hard drive (this is on my old Windows laptop). Something vital inside Windows had broken and Windows wouldn't boot. So I used a small Linux distro to access the files. I saved everything of importance to USB drives (old Saturday Night Live episodes, various web files, some images and of course the desktop background which had quite a bit of history attached to it). Satisfied with that, I reformatted.

Then a few days later, I started looking for the desktop background. I was starting to panic, as I couldn't find it any where. I had given up on finding it on my storage devices so I hit the internet. I searched for the site I originally downloaded the background from (2007 Cricket World Cup), but they were no longer there. I looked on my webspace in case I had uploaded it there at some point. I even went through the monthly "Desktop Showcase" threads at phpBB.com just in case I had uploaded it there at some point. Unfortunately, after searching everywhere for it I concluded it was too late.

Fast forward about six months to yesterday, and I got out my (ancient?) 256mb flash drive. To my astonishment, there was the background! I had saved it after all. :)

Re: Where is the desktop background stored?

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:50 pm
by Layzie Bone
and next time if windows fails to boot here's a little guide to fix it and get back into windows.

First what are you getting on your screen? A Blue Screen, or is Windows saying it's missing a file? or is it just rebooting over and over again.

Blue Screen? DId you add/change any hardware? power outage? install new software? That could have triggered the problem. If you added any hardware or updated drivers try booting to safe mode to undo the changes. Simply press F8 to bring up the Windows start up options, and choose Safe Mode. NOTE: Not all programs uninstallers run while in safe mode, in which case you'll need to resort to adavanced tools such as Autoruns, but only use these if you know what you're doing. If you experienced a power outage or if it was something spontaneous then look below for instructions.

If you have your Windows 2000/ XP / Vista / 7 install disc place it in your drive. If yours is 2k or XP press R at the first screen (2k users press R again for Recovery Console). You will be asked which Windows installation which is usually C:\WINDOWS (sometimes C:\WINNT), you'll be asked for an administrator account which will probably be blank so just hit enter again (unless you've changed it). Then at the C:\WINDOWS prompt type without quotations, "chkdsk /r". Now for the Vista/7 users, at the first screen click on Install, sounds scary dont worry, the next screen look in the left bottom corner for 'Repair My Computer.' Then windows will look for installations, after it gets done doing its silly thing click on Command Prompt, type in this "chkdsk /b C:" without quotes. Chkdsk will usually correct any inconsistencies in the NTFS or FAT32 file system, but not always and it depends on what caused windows to break. Once again if you just did updates or installed new software or hardware this will probably not do the trick, you will have to boot to safe mode in order to undo those changes, and also keep in mind that some software wont uninstall as it need the Windows Installer Service to uninstall the program and you guessed it, can't run the Windows Installer Service in Safe Mode, in this case you could use an advanced tool such as Autoruns to keep certian drivers from loading in normal startup, trick is that you need to know what drivers and files are being loaded by each program, can get a little tricky if you're not familar with these tools and the driver files that are normally loaded with windows, if these dont work then probably a clean install (back up your data first) would be the best solution or have a technician come fix it for you.

If there are any errors in this let me know, I will be working on a more in depth thread on fixing unbootable windows installations, believe me I've been through them all. Ever got this? "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: hal.dll" I have and Hal is just fine, this is most likely on of the registry hives are corrupt and can easily be fixed. This will be included and I will post a link in this post once I have it up. That way our googlers can easily find it.