Desktop Wallpaper Problem

[firthm]

Hi Everyone,

I currently have a problem with a wallpaper which I am deploying via Group Policy though i think the issue is a setting on the clients.

Basically I am deploying a corporate background, it's a JPG (and hence i'm using active desktop) and is going out to Windows XP clients. The machines are fairly capable with an OK graphics card and decent processor, so I have no specification worries.

Basically when the desktop appears, which is basically as soon as it is logged on, the bottom 75% of the image disappears and turns black, so that only the top 25% of the background is visible.

If you right click on the background and select "Refresh" it comes up no problem...

Any idea's greatly appreciated on this one!!

Thanks,
Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[darrellblackhawk]

Here's a stab in the dark...

1- Do any of the clients have the TRUE graphics card drivers and monitor drivers installed?

2- Is the jpg a progressive jpg?
(If so, maybe that's the problem)
see:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/

and search for: progressive.)

But to be honest, I've never seen this problem.

Darrell

 

[firthm]

Hi Darrell,

I must admit I would have thought the graphics drivers may have been the problem, as these machines are custom builds from some cruddy little computer shop (and I am despearately trying to get rid of them).

However, the same problem also happens to me, and I have a Toshiba laptop with all the right drivers...which is odd. I don't get the problem after every reboot though, like some!

Maybe the drivers are the problem....I will check and let you know.

The JPG itself is just a flat jpg....

Thanks,
Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[firthm]

For everyones info, if you would like to see a screenshot of what the problem actually looks like:

http://www.thecommsroom.co.uk/mike/background.JPG

Thanks,
Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[Glenn9999]

A lot of question depends on how you are moving this change through.

Are you trying to force the change onto the desktop (i.e. not just change settings, but if something different is there, force the background to change to what you have set), or are you just doing settings to make the file appear on boot? How are you approaching this?

And on the topic of the file in question, could you provide a sample of a file that seems to do this? Or would the snapshot you provided above be an adequate example?

Which Windows XP is this? original, or with a service pack applied?

 

[firthm]

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the reply.

This change has been made across our entire domain to the Users OU. So any domain user (except Built-In such as admin etc) will have the background.

In some circumstances it is replacing a background which the user has had set, on others they do not have one.

It is being deployed to XP SP2 machines, all patched up, who are members of a SBS 2003 domain.

The file itself is a 120k jpeg, and the attached should be OK as they are all the same, it is just a boring green background with our logo embedded upon it.

The file is located on a file server, very quick machine, located on the same site as the workstations, who are all connected at 100m.

If you get the problem, and just leave your screen, it will auto refresh in about 10 minutes and give you the full background. It only happens to me personally about once a week.

Thanks,
Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[JC214]

Mike,

I am having the same issue in my office. I was wondering if you corrected the problem.

Thanks,
JC

 

[firthm]

Hi JC,

I'm afraid not, three weeks after having the problem and still no resolution....i'm glad I am not the only one though, it makes me feel less victimised!

I have tried changing the image in terms of size and quality to no avail. The only thing I haven't done is converted the file to a bitmap and tried deploying it as a non active desktop, but it isn't really the point, it should work!

If you would like me to try your desktop background or vice versa please post it somewhere and I will do the same, though I suspect we will still have the same issue!

The problem with making it a non active desktop is that it has to be a bitmap, and therefore bloats in size! Argh....

Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[gpalmer711]

Not really I direct solution but it might work if you set your active desktop to point to a htm page i.e. \\server\folder\desktop\desktop.htm

Then have a basic html page that contains just to code to show the picture. This also give you some scope to expand the use of the active desktop to display messages to all employees - or more advanced reatures.

I'm not even sure if this will solve the refresh problem as it is something that I have not come across before, but it's worth a shot. If you need some help writing the html let me know and i'll knock it up for you.

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[AndyVickerstaff]

Hi Mike,

Just so you know, I am also having the same problems in my office.

However, I have a slightly worse situation where the wallpaper does not automatically refresh after 10 minutes and I find some users work the whole day with a third of a background. So I would be greateful to know how your machines refresh after 10 minutes.

Anyone know how to make Windows XP refresh it's wallpaper automatically or even a script that would refresh the desktop once a user has logged in would be excellent.

Thanks

Andy

 

[JC214]

Mike,

Thanks for your quick response. I have been testing all day and I actually opened a case with Microsoft. Their first recommendation was to Disable Turn on Classic Shell, but this was not configured and made no difference.

I Enabled Turn on Classic Shell and changed Load a specific visual style or force Windows Classic to Not Configured. Shut down a system at least seven times and I did not have to refresh the screen, but that doesn't mean it won't happen again tomorrow.

If it reoccurs by the end of the week then my manager and I were actually discussing trying the bitmap option as you stated above.

The other option is to load the wallpaper locally (real pain) and make the GPO point locally. In the past, this test seemed to improve the quality of the wallpaper.

After all this I am tired of working on what should be a simple task. We might just let it go and force a Classic view with no wallpaper.

I am having the same exact error as you are so I don’t think we need to exchange wallpapers, but try to make your background image 800 x 600 and keep the logo resolution as low as possible.

Keep me posted and I’ll do the same.

Thanks,
JC

 

[firthm]

Hi Guys!

I'm relieved (in a selfish kind of way) that there are now three of us having the same problem!

Andy, on some machines I do get the same problem as you, wherby the background stays distorted all day, yet occasionally machines do seem to refresh. It is almost as though it's a timing issue, as though if a machine can get exclusive access to the file for a few seconds, it works, if it can't it just craps out...

JC, I think the bitmap option is a fairly safe bet because you're then not using the active desktop feature, and the background will be treat as a normal wallpaper with no processing involved, I genuinely hope that works!

I know what you mean about loading it locally, it is sure to work, but such a pain...the question is, why is it flaking out trying to connect over the network for the file?

It's such a simple, mundane "admin" task I can't believe how much of a nightmare this has been...and even more so, I can't believe how few people have reported the problem...

Greg, thanks for the offer of HTML code, if I get to the point of exhaustion where I can no longer go on with this problem, I might call on you, thanks!!

I will keep you all posted on any progress....

Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[AndyVickerstaff]

I am not sure that it is a connecting problem which is the cause of this.

I created a script to copy the file to the local hard drive (only if it doesn't already exist) and have amended my Group Policy to load the file locally.

However, this has not averted the problem. I made this change a week ago and still the wallpaper does not display correctly on everyone's PC.

I guess I could try the classic shell approach on a test PC and see what visual difference it makes. Thanks JC.

Andy

 

[Leozack]

Wow this is exactly the problem I had on new HP dx220's and I had never seen anything like it.

You'll find if you click the desktop and then hit F5 or rightcilck the desktop and say refersh, that the wallpaper is fine, you don't have to wait 10 minutes.

But the solution? I found nothing all over the web. Except someone saying shrink it down to the size of their resolution. I found the backgrounds had been made at a true 4:3 reolution, not 1024*768, so I changed them to be 10*7 and haven't fonud out if it has helped or not yet.

Just thought I'd let you know you can insta-refersh if you want, and that this problem DOES seem to affect more than just you, just noone seems to talk about it xD Ahem

If copying the jpg's to the HD on logon and setting a local path in the GPO doesn't fix it then I don't know what else to try should I find resizing it hasn't worked. Like I said I've never seen or heard of anything like this until this year.

_________________________________
Leozack

MakeUniverse($infinity,1,42);

 

[Spectere]

Hi there. Just posting to say that I'm having the same problem where I work. Highly annoying indeed.

It was fine on our test machines when we used a BMP, but the thought of pushing a 2MB+ bitmap over the network every time someone logs in or refreshes the screen doesn't appeal to me.

We've had the problem occur with both JPG and PNG wallpapers, each saved with a variety of options, so I have a feeling it's more of an Active Desktop issue than anything else (grr).

Has anyone tried typing up a basic HTML page and pointing clients to that yet?

 

[firthm]

Hi All,

I can't believe how many "closet black background" people there are, this issue has probably caused lots of issues but never been investigated much....

We are the top result on Google I see....(can't remember the search terms now though).

Anyway, my only concern with trying an HTML background is that when i've played with adding an HTML site to the background, it doesn't center it...I think it pushes it to the right slightly so that the icons don't interfere with hyperlinks on the page when clicked...so it would skew the background to the right of the screen, being a web page...

I tried shrinking my background to a smaller size, 640x480 and deploying it as a bitmap (900k) and this seems fine, but the quality obviously suffers from the stretching!

Mike

Michael Firth
Network Infrastructure Officer

~If it's not broke, break it and LEARN~

 

[bjcline]

I work at a community college and am having the same issue with our lab computers. The computers are not on a domain. The background is a bitmap that is stored locally and applied with a local group policy. I have found that if in the group policy, the background is set to stretch, then it distorts with a black background until the screen refreshes. If I set the background to center, then it displays off center until the screen refreshes. Does anyone know of a way to force a screen refresh with code that could be set to run after log in??
Brenda

 

[AndyVickerstaff]

Ok guys. I have now been testing the Disable Classic Shell approach that Microsoft suggested for the past few days and so far have not seen a single screen that has been corrupted.
I would like to confirm that previously it was not configured in group policy and I set it to Disabled.

So thanks JC for logging a call with MS!

I will keep you posted if there is any change.

Cheers
Andy

 

[Glenn9999]

Does anyone know of a way to force a screen refresh with code that could be set to run after log in??

I mentioned a program I wrote in response to one of these posts about putting a bitmap to screen in one of these threads. It sets the registry settings for a bitmap and then forces a desktop refresh through a Windows API call to show the bitmap immediately.

Since I don't have a steady web space, I use this file sharing service. You have 7 days or 25 downloads.

http://download.yousendit.com/B2BD997F126D4BFF

I don't know how applicable this is to most of you, but hopefully it will be of some use.

 

[Rick998]

To refresh the desktop, copy/paste the following into Notepad and save it as something like 'refresh-xp.vbs'.

Set WshShell = Wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.AppActivate "Program Manager"
WshShell.SendKeys "{F5}"
Set WshShell = Nothing
Wscript.Quit

Hope this helps...