I can't find where the photograph used for my desktop background is stored. It is NOT in my pictures or under desktop. I took a picture tonight........saved it as a background, then edited it for web publication and accidentally stored over the original name. I know the computer has the original photo because it's on the desktop but I can't find it and extensive searched of microsoft help have not helped either. Can you help me out?

Look in C:\Documents and Settings\looppool\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer folder, there should be a bmp file there. That is your wallpaper.

Go to search in the start menu. For files and folders. type *.jpeg in the search box. This will find all jpegs on your c: drive ... do the same with the vatious image formats eg *.tif, *.bmp etc etc. best of luck Frank :

They are also in here C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper Quote: Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!

Thanks everyone, but none of these locations have the .jpg that is in memory for my personal desktop background. My *.jpg, *.jpeg and *.bmp searches yield nothing Response #1 and #3 yield wallpaper but that's not what I'm looking for. The original .jpg is on the desktop and I can tell it is the original because there were a lot of colored spots on the larger original, whereas I photoshopped all of them out on the considerably smaller .jpg that is the only thing that shows up in searches. There must be a place in the memory (perhaps in a hidden file) that keeps a copy of the desktop photograph. Even by checking the properties of the desktop, it lists the .jpg but not it's path statement. Any other ideas, or even hints about how to search hidden folders for the missing file?

If it is just being accessed from memory, you better not change your wallpaper until you've used the "Print Screen" feature to save it some place else. Unfortunately, you are SOL on this one, since you've overwritten the original, (same as if it was deleted) there is no way to get it back or access its location directly from memory as you would if it was still stored in a folder.

Well, after consulting several people and the advice here, my wife came home, spent 10 minutes on Google and discovered the solution. She blows me away! As it turns out, Windows stores the custom wallpaper (desktop background) here: C:\Documents and Settings\Rick\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft but it changes the image from a .jpg to a .bmp file and then renames it as Wallpaper1 To add confusion, it is a hidden file. So going to the properties of the desktop in the control panel is misleading because it names the file by it's .jpg name and misidentifies where it is located. She located the information by discovering that those files are hidden and converted to a .bmp and renamed. She did a special search for .bmp files over 500 kb that are hidden and discovered it. Thanks for all the advice. yours, Rick