Changing Desktop Background in restricted - networked computers

This trick works only for Windows OS (tested on XP) 
Edit: For other versions of windows, it might differ slightly, but the basic idea remains the same.


In many companies, schools, colleges, and other shared restricted networks, desktop-background, screen-savers are fixed and boring (mostly)..and changing them through desktop themes manager (generally through right-clicking on desktop and then properties/OR in Windows higher versions through Personalize) is disabled by your network-Admin and using options like using regedit.exe, gpedit.msc, and others...too are not possible, because probably those too are disabled or you don't know enough about them.


Keep in mind, in network-managed computers, Network-Administrators do run scripts to restart, to update, to change wallpapers/screensaver of all computers periodically, etc.
Then in that case, there is a simple trick which we can do to change desktop-background.


Go to - (actually the name of file which is set as desktop background, its location can be found out from registry entries using regedit.exe)
1) C:\Documents and Settings\<your-account-name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\
2) In this directory, you will find .bmp file generally named like Wallpaper.bmp, wallpaper1.bmp, likewise..
3) Copy, paste your wallpaper file (the one which you want to apply as background), make sure your file is of type (bit-map image i.e. bmp). delete the previous wallpaper file and rename your file with the same name.


Note - File must be of type bmp, and not just renamed to .bmp extension. Edit your image using mspaint or some image editor and save the image of type bmp. and then try to do as above.

In case, if you are further interested to know where exactly, does Windows save the path of image applied as desktop background, 
Go to run >> regedit.exe >> traverse to path - "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop".
In the right pane, you will see a bunch of key,values. Go to "Wallpaper" entry and right click to Modify (or simply double click).

and 

I know, in most of the cases, network admin won't give you admin rights, so you can't open regedit utility, but the idea was to show you why I gave you direct/hard-coded/fixed path for desktop wallpaper in point 1.

So if you are a real computer geek then you might wanna tweak your computer using other interesting keys from regedit.exe or msconfig.exe or gpedit.msc.

#Edit - Thanks to Mary for her comments

On Windows 7/Vista (I think on Windows 8 ass well), go to directory 

"C:\Users\<USER_PROFILE_NAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes"

e.g. "C:\Users\pramod\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes"

or "C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes"

or open windows explorer and in address bar put following -
"%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes" 

You will see two files names:
1) slideshow.ini (if you have enabled slideshow - meaning multiple wallpapers set and they change one after the other) 

and/or
2) TranscodedWallpaper.jpg file

This image file is which you should change, see it is of type ".jpg", so just copy paste any jpg image (which you want to set as wallpaper) and rename it to TranscodedWallpaper.jpg

And log-off windows and log-on again. You will see your wallpaper changed.
In case, if you have slideshow.ini file, rename it to something else or delete it (which I don't like).

So, that's it. :-)