I was working on a Customers Laptop and I could not change the background picture… It didn’t matter if I tried a different theme or even just trying to selecting a different picture. It would just revert back the the original wallpaper.. Well it appears the TranscodedWallpaper.jpg file has become corrupted.. And the steps i used to fix this problem are as follows.

  1. Click Start, paste the following text into the search box, and then press Enter   %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\
  2. Note: Make sure you have the option checked: Show hidden files, folders, and drives in your folder optionsSteps to check are as follows.
    1. Click the Organize menu entry and then click the Folder and Search Options
    2. This will bring up the Folder Options dialog box ; click on the View tab
    3. In the View tab make sure the Show Hidden Files, Folders and Drives checkbox is filled in.
    4. When you’re finished, click the OK button
  3. Right-click the TranscodedWallpaper.jpg file, and then click Rename.
  4. Change the file name to TranscodedWallpaper.old, and then click Yes when you are prompted.
  5. If slideshow.ini is listed, double-click this file. Slideshow.ini should open in Notepad. Select all the text in slideshow.ini if any exists, and then press Delete on the keyboard.
  6. On the File menu, click Save.
  7. Close Notepad.
  8. Close the Windows Explorer window, and then browse to the picture that will be set as the background image.
  9. Try to apply a background picture again.

Hope this helps.. Posted by Troy Witmer