This is a guide for people who want to customize their machines to the max.
If you right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize, and click on Desktop Background at the bottom you’ll see all the default wallpapers that are included in your system. In Windows 7, there are categories like Architecture, Characters, etc.
In Windows 8, you have more categories like Flowers and Lines and colors. Again, I really would rather all of these wallpapers not show up.
Windows 10 has a new set of wallpapers that will be shipping when it’s released this summer. Unfortunately, deleting the wallpapers is as easy as navigating to the correct folder and deleting everything there.
How to Remove Desktop Wallpapers
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows\Themes Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10: C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming.minecraft In Windows XP, there are a few locations where these annoying wallpapers are stored. In Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10, the wallpapers are all stored in just one location. The main place to look in every version of Windows is: In Windows XP, there are a few locations where these annoying wallpapers are stored. In Windows 7, Windows 8 and 10, the wallpapers are all stored in the “C:\Documents and Settings<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows” folder. The main place to look in every version of windows is: C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming.minecraft ..
In Windows XP, you can choose to have a default wallpaper that is either a JPEG or BMP image. The most famous image on Windows XP is Bliss.bmp, which is the default desktop background for that operating system.
In Windows 7 and higher, you might find a couple of folders and those are the categories that I was mentioning above. The folders are called “Categories” and they contain all the information about your computer.
You can easily delete all the images in this folder and they will be removed from the desktop background dialog the next time you open it. If you think you may actually want to use the wallpapers later, you can just cut them and paste them into a temp folder. Copy them back later on to have them show up in the list again.
In Windows 7, 8 and 10, you might run into an error message when trying to delete wallpapers. This is because you first need permission from TrustedInstaller to delete them.
In Windows 10, there is a feature called TrustedInstaller that can prevent people from deleting important system files. To delete the files or folders, you will have to change the owner to yourself first and then give yourself Full Control permissions. Thankfully, I’ve already written a detailed article on how to delete files protected by TrustedInstaller.
To add your own wallpaper to Windows 8, follow these steps:
- Open the Start screen and type “wallpaper” into the search box.
- When the Wallpaper app appears, click on it to open it.
- In the Wallpaper app, click on the “Change background” button.
- In the “Backgrounds” section of the Change Background window, select “Custom.” Click on the “Browse” button and locate your image files in JPG format. You can also use folders if you want to organize your images by topic or theme. Once you’ve selected your images, click on the “Set as default” button to set them as your new desktop wallpaper. If you want to add your own wallpapers into Windows 8, follow these steps: 1 Open Start screen and type ‘wallpaper’ into search box; when Wallpaper app appears click on it to open it; in Wallpaper app click on ‘Change background’ button; in ‘Backgrounds’ section of Change Background window select ‘Custom’; click on ‘Browse’ button and locate image files in JPG format; once you’ve selected image files click on ‘Set as default’ button to set them as new desktop wallpaper ..
To add a new wallpaper to the My Wallpapers folder, open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the Wallpaper folder inside your user’s Documents and Settings folder. Inside the Wallpaper folder, you’ll find a bunch of default wallpapers that you can use if you don’t want to customize your own look. To add a new wallpaper to the My Wallpapers folder, simply click on it and select “Customize” from the resulting menu. You’ll then be able to choose which pictures you want to use as your wallpaper and how big they should be.
Windows XP has a lot of wallpapers stored in its C:\Windows directory. Make sure to be careful when deleting them, as there are also important files stored there. Just delete the .BMP files, and don’t forget to leave the rest of the files alone.
To make the most efficient use of your computer’s storage, I suggest viewing the directory in thumbnails mode and then slowly browsing and deleting the wallpapers as you see them. ..
Windows 10 users can remove background wallpapers by using a simple method. This is not something most people would care to do, but if you are someone like me who likes to tinker, then it’s fun little experiment. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!