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I want to schedule a .bat file to change the location of the wallpaper slideshow folder every evening (so I can use a folder of 'night' images at night).

I can only find the registry location of the current wallpaper, but not the location of the slideshow folder. Where is it kept?

L J
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1 Answers1

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You can find the wallpaper location and wallpaper fit in 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.

The information about the slideshow is not in the Windows registry. You have to open this path:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\

and make sure, that hidden files are visible (you can change that in folder options).

The info is in slideshow.ini. There are tags for root slideshow image and slideshows as ImagesRootPIDL which is uuencoded PCIDLIST_ABSOLUTE struct which you could use to manipulate the location of the folder. I think working with two seperate slideshow.ini files which you exchange seems to be the easier way.
EDIT
The basic process is (no way around due to MS internals to set Wallpaper from one Slideshow to another Slideshow

  • Copy the backed up slideshow.ini file back into the theme directory
  • Stop-process -name explorer
  • Sleep 1 sec, and start up explorer only if it hasn't automatically restarted
Codebreaker007
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  • That is wonderful, thank you Codebreaker007. I will use your suggestion of using two separate slideshow.ini files. Now I just need to work out how to convert the uuencoded location into regular text!? – L J May 14 '20 at 14:26
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    No need to decode the uuencoded. Just do a setup via explorer/control panel for day settings (including pics, slideshow, transistions and so on) - save ini file as day_slideshow.ini, repeat for night settings and you have two configured files. De/Encoding is only necessary if you want to directly write into that file via C++ or similar. – Codebreaker007 May 14 '20 at 14:31
  • Wow. That's brilliant! Thank you so much sir! – L J May 15 '20 at 10:57
  • Update: I've just tested this and have a problem. When I copy a new slideshow.ini into that folder (overwriting the original), the new version is ignored and images from the original folder continue to be displayed. – L J May 15 '20 at 11:08
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    You have to write your batch as in my edit – Codebreaker007 May 15 '20 at 11:45
  • Thank you! I also noticed that the location does update automatically if you wait long enough. – L J May 15 '20 at 13:10