Solved personalize, desktop background no longer showing pictures

[JimJoe]

Not quite certain where to place this.

sometimes in the past 7-10 days when I go to change my computer's desktop background picture, I see only the Irfanview icon, not the picture.

I haven't updated Irfanview, I have the latest version.

No updates to my computer until today, so it couldn't be that.

Windows Explorer is set to Large Icons. I changed it to all the available sizes, still no picture, just the icon.

Just to make sure the pictures weren't refreshing. I found a folder with just 3 pngs. I did all of the icon sizes, no picture thumbnail shows.

What could be wrong and how do I fix it ?

Thank you.

 

[Brink]

Hello Jim,

It sounds like Windows Photo Gallery is not set as the default program for all of it's associations.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/83196-default-programs-program-default-associations.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[JimJoe]

Changes the icon I see, but doesn't show the png itself.

I have thousands of pngs, etc. I use as background pics... it would be pain to click on each one to find one I want to use for that day as my desktop background.

 

[Brink]

You might also double check each option below to make sure that thumbnail previews is still turned on.

Thumbnail Previews - Enable or Disable - Windows 7 Forums

 

[Cytherian]

^ Brink is right. Check the Visual Effects settings tab in Performance Options. "Show thumbnails instead of icons" is probably unchecked. This is a performance control that will prevent Windows Explorer from generating thumbnail images for image files instead of using a default image icon. Unfortunately, this setting also affects the Background Image selection and thus thumbnail images won't show. I verified this for myself, because I had that option unselected. Windows should actually override the setting in that background change interface, because without the thumbnails the dialog is basically useless.

 

[JimJoe]

Bingo ! Always show icons, never thumbnails was checked.

it isn't checked now.

 

[Brink]

Perfect.

 

[Cytherian]

Good to hear it.