Tricking Out Your Windows XP Wallpaper
Courtesy of Gino
You see your Windows XP wallpaper everyday when you power on your computer. I often get very bored of my desktop and it’s wallpaper very quickly. So why not trick it out with a video, or a webpage. Or get it to change every hour to a new one?
Automatically Rotate Windows XP Wallpapers
Back in the old days changing your Windows XP wallpapers was mainly done by going into your desktop properties and clicking on a new wallpaper, and changing it to that one, then repeating once every other day. But now we have a solution. Windows PowerToys Wallpaper Changer (If that link doesn’t work here’s a mirror).
The Wallpaper changer can be set to change wallpapers from 15 minutes to 1 week. You can manually skip pictures, or choose one to show up as long as you want. You can configure the folder that it gathers its wallpapers from. As well set a certain wallpaper folder to show images up for special dates like Easter and Christmas.
Use A Webpage as your Windows Wallpaper
This trick doesn’t involve any fancy software or anything new to download and install, its functionality is already built into Windows XP. You can use your wallpaper as a portal to the world wide web, load up your computer and you already have you Google Home Page sitting on your desktop.
Right click on your desktop. Click on ‘Properties’. Click the ‘Desktop’ tab. Click ‘Customize Desktop…’ button. Click on the ‘Web’ tab. Now click on ‘New’ and put a URL address, then click ok, and click ok to the active desktop message. Click ‘Ok’ then hit ‘Apply’ and voila.
You should have a small window on your desktop that resembles the web page you typed in earlier. You can resize this window, make it cover the entire desktop or a part of the desktop.
Replace Your Boring Windows XP Wallpaper With Videos Like DreamScene
If you’ve not heard of DreamScene, it’s the Windows Vista Ultimate version of using really cool videos of nature and sea creatures as wallpaper backgrounds.
It’s only available on Windows Vista Ultimate version as an extra download, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use a just as good Windows XP alternative, VLC Media Player.
VLC Media Player is popular for being able to play almost any video, and doesn’t require specific codecs. Whenever I’ve needed a video played that Winamp, Windows Media Player, and the like can’t play I’ve always come back to VLC and it’s been able to play it amazing.
Now, the key to replacing our Windows XP wallpaper with video is in right clicking on the video and selecting the ‘Wallpaper’ option. If the wallpaper option doesn’t show up go to Settings -> Preferences -> Video -> Output Modules -> Direct X, and check the ‘Advanced’ box in the bottom right corner. Then go back and try to right click on the video.
Setting up Windows XP wallpaper for Dual-Monitors
Windows XP has built in functionality for dual monitors, however the customization options are limited when it comes to setting up wallpapers via your dual monitors. You can have the same wallpaper on each monitor and that’s about it. If you have dual-monitors I highly recommend that you invest in a tool such as Ultramon, or Multi-Monitor Wallpaper Tool, which is free. I’ve dabbled around with with Multi-Monitor Wallpaper and couldn’t quite figure out how to work it to my advantage, and I already had Ultramon so I just decided to stick with what worked for me. Also with Ultramon you can make it so your taskbar will extend over to the second monitor without it being stretched, and the taskbar will only show the programs that being used on that monitor, a feature I find quite handy for multitasking.
With Ultramon you just select which wallpapers you want for each monitor, click apply, and there you have it, and if you have a dual-monitor wallpaper you can use that to span across both screens, something Windows XP can’t do.
In the above examples, the line in the middle between the two wallpapers signifies my seperate monitors, I took two themed wallpapers that I happened to have on hand, and used Ultramon so I could use both of them on the seperate monitors. Oh, and I love Megadeth.
Wallpaper Resources
- Desktopography - Described as “an exhibition, a showcase of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide. Designers spend around 90% of their waking life in of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design with the all important aspect of being outdoors.” My favorite place for amazing nature wallpapers.
- deviantArt - One of my favorite places to find good, custom wallpapers about practically anything.
- ThemeXP - A good site has over 65,000 wallpapers, be careful though some links contain adware, specifically the downloads that have .exe files.
- WinCustomize - Another wallpaper site with a giant selection of wallpaper.
- Desktop Earth Wallpaper Generator - A cool wallpaper generator that takes high quality pictures of the earth and makes them into high resolution wallpapers, you can select the size and the location along with the time and date of the picture.
- Desktop Nexus - Desktop Nexus is a social wallpaper upload website. They are striving centralize all wallpapers so that way we don’t have to go google searching for crappy wallpapers, users can submit wallpapers, they are trying to revolutionize your options for finding good wallpapers.
- Rejected Windows Vista Wallpapers - These are a collection of all Windows wallpapers that didn’t make the cut in Vista. Even though they got cut they are really beautiful wallpapers.
Wallpaper Tools
- Adolix Wallpaper Changer - A free wallpaper changer that allows you to make easy playlists of wallpapers and set the time they appear as wallpapers.
- Wallpaper Cycler Lite - A wallpaper changer that is very light weight, includes a random selection algorithm to ensure that wallpapers are fully selected at random.
- Ultramon - A utility for multi-monitor systems, that is designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors.
- Multi-Monitor Wallpaper Tool - A tool for multiple monitor desktops that allows you add in and splice up to 9 images for your wallpapers to completely customize your multi-monitor Windows wallpaper experience.
- PowerToys Wallpaper Changer - The original wallpaper changer that was released as an extra PowerToy for Windows XP. It does everything you need a wallpaper changer needs to do.
March 15th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I use xplanet for windows. A brilliant program with many features.
March 15th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Xplanet is really cool. I like using Ultramon, because it works really good for my Dual-Monitors, I think it’d be awesome if they had a DreamScene wallpaper video that took you through space via a space shuttle that used real photographs taken by satellites and shuttles and stuff.