How can I find the desktop background image?

[dakota81]

Have a computer with bad memory that corrupted the system files and have to put in a new install of XP. I like to do all the little things to make Windows look as much like the previous install as I can, and would like to get the same background image up. In Win95/98/ME just had to look in the system.ini / win.ini file (I forget which it actually was) and that told me what the background image was.

Can I find the same information out of WinXP?

 

[bcastner]

The wallpaper and background setting were in the registry, which your new installation "over the top" as opposed to a repair reinstallation has completely overwritten.

 

[dakota81]

I ghosted the harddrive to another harddrive before I wiped it clean, so I still have everything from the original corrupted installation.

I've played this computer repair game for long enough to always ghost the drive before messing with the OS.

 

[bcastner]

The two critical registry keys controlling wallpaper and background images are:

HKEY USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

If I understand what you did correctly, you cleaned the existing XP installation, did a clean new installation, and want to restore registry settings from a Ghost image saved on a second hard disk driver?

With Ghost version 9.0 I think you would have a fighting chance, as it allows you to mount an image as a secondary device. Under pre-Ghost 9.0, I think you have to find the image and restore it manually.

 

[linney]

Norton Ghost as I understand allows for the recovery of individual files or selected folders.

Is there a way to search the image for your file. The desktop image you are looking for will be in the folder which you yourself selected when you used the Display Properties/ Desktop to browse for a Desktop picture. All the original Windows Background pictures are located in the Windows folder, but your old one could be in any folder.

Next time use the Files and Transfer Wizard before you reformat.

293118 - HOW TO: Use Files and Settings Transfer Wizard in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293118&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH#2

306186 - HOW TO: Use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard By Using the Windows XP CD-ROM

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306186

 

[dakota81]

I suppose the key piece of information that I didn't think of mentioning was that the old XP installation cannot boot, and results in system rebooting every attempt. I thought that might be obvious because if I could boot the old installation, I wouldn't have posted this question. So the files & settings transfer wizard cannot be performed.

For the ghost image, I did a disk to disk copy rather than a disk to image copy, so all I have to do is hook the drive on the secondary IDE port to examine and copy over data files.

So I do appreciate the help, though this comes down to the original question, trying to find out what the background image was by looking at the files. Also, this is not my own computer, so I haven't a clue what the background image might have been. People do like these efforts, so I would like to learn how to look it up.

Can this be looked up maybe using the recovery console when booting to the XP cd? Maybe I'll try google for a spell.