I finally found a simple way to change the wallpaper via a script. But the last line which calls a dll and is supposed to update the changes does not. Thus the wallpaper is "changed" but the changes won't show until I log out, shut down, or some times refresh the desktop. REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V Wallpaper /T REG_SZ /F /D "c:\WINDOWS\Blue Lace 16.bmp" REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V WallpaperStyle /T REG_SZ /F /D 0 REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V TileWallpaper /T REG_SZ /F /D 2 RUNDLL32.exe user32.dll,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters I'm running XP SP3 and I'm wondering if that dll call still works, since most of the posts I found it in are older. Also would anyone know the values needed for stretched and centered? Since that is tiled now.

@echo off & setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion cls REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V WallpaperStyle /T REG_SZ /F /D 2 pushd "%userprofile%\My Documents\My Pictures" FOR /F "tokens=1 delims= " %%A IN ('DIR *.bmp ^| FIND /c /v ""') DO SET var=%%A set /a z=%random%%%var+1 for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in ('dir /b "%userprofile%\My Documents\My Pictures\*.bmp"') do ( set /a N+=1 if !z! equ !N! REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /V Wallpaper /T REG_SZ /F /D "%userprofile%\My Documents\My Pictures\%%a" ) popd %SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.exe user32.dll, UpdatePerUserSystemParameters cls exit

... um from what I see that is supposed to find a bmp in the document and setting folder then set it to be the wallpaper. Which doesn't even begin to answer my question at all. I know how to set the wallpaper using the registry now but it won't update the desktop when I do so.

You can ask on Professional Win32 api newsgroup : news://nntp.aioe.org/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 or http://groups.google.com/group/comp... where it has already been discussed (they have disassembled all apis and then got all parameters..)