How to retrieve my -last- wallpaper
I had made a custom wallpaper to stretch across both of my monitors, and it was beautiful for years. Recently however I was looking for image properties on a local image and somehow wound up selecting "Set Desktop Background" by mistake.
I cannot find the file that was in use before. It wasn't a web image, because I had cropped and edited in a paint program. I just don't know where the file lived.
I have backups, but without seeing where the registry key pointed before, not sure where to look in the backup anyway.
Any suggestions? It's not under themes nor \windows\web\wallpaper.
Thanks! DAve
11 Answer
Check the value for "Wallpaper" stored in the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop under "Wallpaper". On a Windows 7 system, I see the value stored in "Wallpaper" is C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg, where Username is the name for the currently logged in account (example).
When you select an image to be used for your wallpaper under Windows 7, the image will be copied to that location and renamed TranscodedWallpaper.jpg. If you see C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg as the value for "Wallpaper", if you have backups, you should be able to replace the current TranscodedWallpaper.jpg from a backup copy of C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg, substituting your account name for Username.
On a Windows 8 system, I see C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Internet Explorer Wallpaper.bmp as the value in the registry for "Wallpaper". The image stored in that location is what I see for the desktop background on that system. If that is what you see, then look for a prior version of that file in a backup, instead.
When I checked a Windows 8.1, system, I saw the file listed as C:\Windows\web\wallpaper\Windows\img0.jpg. In that case, I would look for any files in that directory from a backup. If you set the wallpaper to your own custom wallpaper, though, you may not see the image file there. There is still a way you can determine the location and file name for the prior wallpaper if you have a backup copy of the NTUSER.DAT file from the %USERPROFILE% directory, usually C:\USERS\USERNAME, for the account by using the NirSoft RegFileExport utility to read NTUSER.DAT and export a particular part of HKCU to a file.
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