Changing XP Background (Wallpaper) Images

I know, I know, XP's old.  But this is Practical School Tech and education is a little behind the times.

We had a couple of student systems where the students had set a background image by right-clicking images in IE and setting them as the wallpaper.  Cute trick, right? But it's a pain to undo on a system where they don't get rights to the Display Properties page.  The setting is stored per user (that way everyone can have their own) which is great unless your using a generic account that several students share.  So how to undo it?

I though I'd start with the background image file.  I did some Googling and most places said look in here 
C:\Documents and Settings\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\

But that isn't the right path, but it's close, it's really in
 C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

Or if you want to find it in a batch file (or just typing by hand), try this path instead
%AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

After finding the file I wanted to know where it is set in the registry.  Since the image was set from inside IE file name was a very descriptive Internet Explorer Wallpaper.bmp.  That's fairly unique, so I just searched through the registry for that file name.  It turns out that path is stored in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

To clear the background image out I just blanked out the registry here.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper  

After a reboot (or log off and log back on) the background image will be cleared and you'll be back to the pleasant soft blue.  

But I didn't want to stop there.  I wanted the change to go into affect immediately. I new when I changed the background through the Display Properties that the change happened right then.  So that means there's a programmatic call somewhere that can make that happen.  I had figured it was probably in some windows dll file and since wallpapers had been around so long that it was probably in one of the more common ones.  A little more Googling and I came across this line

%SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE user32.dll,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters

I crossed my fingers and gave it a shot and what do you know, it actually worked.

So I take all this information and roll it into a ZENworks bundle that deletes the key and then calls the UpdatePerUserSystemParameters to make it go into affect immediately.

New ways to access the print wizard

Ever been working on a machine that's been locked down and restricted from controlling the printer settings?  It can be a real pain to have to log out and log back in as another user to change settings.  You can work around these restrictions by combining the RUNAS command with PRINTUI.DLL and the RUNDLL32.


You can get into the inner workings of PRINTUI.DLL to see exactly what you can do with a peek at the help screen:
RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry /?


You can check out Rob Van der Woude's page at http://www.robvanderwoude.com/2kprintcontrol.php for a little more detail on the workings.  He also mentions a few VBS files (%windir%\System32\*prn*.vbs) that come with Windows XP that can also help when working with printers.  I've seen them, looked through them, played with them, but never tried to use them so I cannot say as to whether or not they would help on a locked down machine.  But, I have successfully used RUNAS with the PRINTUI.DLL to work with printers on a locked down machine.