Nathan Meyer
2002-08-27 09:59:47 UTC
Like many others, I've been hit by the "killed
wallpaper bug" which while its a good idea seems like
there is a big bug in the code for restoring the
wallpaper.
I am administering a farm of 300+ servers, mostly NT4.
I use VNC for some basic remote control. I like VNC,
its a pretty good program. I'm currently using
3.3.3R9.
There is a good program out there called bginfo, short
for big info, you can find it at www.sysinternals.com
Basically bginfo grabs some system information and
creates a .bmp file and then changes the current
wallpaper to a new very informative wallpaper. This
is very useful when connecting to one of many
machines, its easy to tell exactly which machine I'm
on and since I'm on a high speed lan and wan,
performance isn't that big of an issue.
So I WANT to KEEP my wallpaper!!
At first, I was annoyed that on connect, VNC killed
the wallpaper. I looked through the docs and found
the registry setting for remove wallpaper and changed
it to 0, hoping to disable this feature. This worked
for the connect problem, but then for no good reason,
when disconnecting, VNC replaces my current wallpaper
with whatever wallpaper is configured in the .DEFAULT
user profile.
So I would think that if you set the remove wallpaper
setting to 0, VNC should be smart enough to leave my
wallpaper alone and not RESET it. The fact that VNC
always insists on resetting the wallpaper even when I
told it not kill the wallpaper is very annoying and
would seem to be an easy thing to check for.
Basicaly, only execute the "reset" or restore routine
if the Remove wallpaper option is set to 1.
Workaround:
In the meantime, I've worked around the problem by
configuring bginfo to also change the wallpaper for
the .DEFAULT profile so when VNC disconnects at least
the correct bitmap is restored. For those who use
bginfo, make sure the "Display at logon" setting is
saved in your configuration file. This is a
workaround that only works when you have a system
configured as a server and don't expect any users to
login to it other than yourself.
When working with a different application or just
trying to keep your specific wallpaper, you would need
to manually modify the registry to make the .DEFAULT
wallpaper the same as the user wallpaper. This only
works for one user or one type of display. Most
likely, this would be useful for machines that are
configured for autolgon.
If you someone fixes this bug for the next release, I
would be very grateful.
- Nate
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wallpaper bug" which while its a good idea seems like
there is a big bug in the code for restoring the
wallpaper.
I am administering a farm of 300+ servers, mostly NT4.
I use VNC for some basic remote control. I like VNC,
its a pretty good program. I'm currently using
3.3.3R9.
There is a good program out there called bginfo, short
for big info, you can find it at www.sysinternals.com
Basically bginfo grabs some system information and
creates a .bmp file and then changes the current
wallpaper to a new very informative wallpaper. This
is very useful when connecting to one of many
machines, its easy to tell exactly which machine I'm
on and since I'm on a high speed lan and wan,
performance isn't that big of an issue.
So I WANT to KEEP my wallpaper!!
At first, I was annoyed that on connect, VNC killed
the wallpaper. I looked through the docs and found
the registry setting for remove wallpaper and changed
it to 0, hoping to disable this feature. This worked
for the connect problem, but then for no good reason,
when disconnecting, VNC replaces my current wallpaper
with whatever wallpaper is configured in the .DEFAULT
user profile.
So I would think that if you set the remove wallpaper
setting to 0, VNC should be smart enough to leave my
wallpaper alone and not RESET it. The fact that VNC
always insists on resetting the wallpaper even when I
told it not kill the wallpaper is very annoying and
would seem to be an easy thing to check for.
Basicaly, only execute the "reset" or restore routine
if the Remove wallpaper option is set to 1.
Workaround:
In the meantime, I've worked around the problem by
configuring bginfo to also change the wallpaper for
the .DEFAULT profile so when VNC disconnects at least
the correct bitmap is restored. For those who use
bginfo, make sure the "Display at logon" setting is
saved in your configuration file. This is a
workaround that only works when you have a system
configured as a server and don't expect any users to
login to it other than yourself.
When working with a different application or just
trying to keep your specific wallpaper, you would need
to manually modify the registry to make the .DEFAULT
wallpaper the same as the user wallpaper. This only
works for one user or one type of display. Most
likely, this would be useful for machines that are
configured for autolgon.
If you someone fixes this bug for the next release, I
would be very grateful.
- Nate
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com