Company wallpaper on servers

[Joni_78]

This has started to drive me nuts.

We have alot of servers and all of those have the same wallpaper which i have stated to hate.

I have admin rights on all servers and i would like to change the default Server 2019 wallpaper on one server where i do most of my work daily.

If I set the walpaper in windows and then logoff and login i briefly see my wallpaper but it then changes to that company wallpaper.

Where is this configured? I didn’t saw any wallpaper related group policies when i checked.

Also I would like change the wallpaper only for my user.

[C:Amie]

Are you using roaming profiles, with the setting applied to the user rater than the machine GPO? App-V, UE-V? Cloud policy via MDM? AppSense? Local policy client like puppet? Is it a Citrix server and using XenApp?

If you are seeing it, it sounds as though it is a user profile policy post-login.

[B26354]

Hello

Where I work there’s a policy for the PC’s not for the servers. In our case it’s a domain policy:  User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Desktop/Desktop / Desktop Wallpaper. We also have a Registry: \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop Wallpaper, this one is also added in a domain policy. We have an individual policy just for the wallpaper and it’s added to the OU’s in the active directory that we want the user to have our beautiful wallpaper. What I do is move my account to another OU (organizational unit) where I block all the policies. The registry can also be added somewhere else like a login script.

Good luck

[Joni_78]

Today I signed in on the server and again briefly saw my wallpaper but then it changed to that god awful Windows 8 purple. It is a plain purple wallpaper that displays info from the server like processor, drives, memory, IP and such. I just can't stand that purple anymore.

Thanks for the tips, I'll check those.

Edited October 5, 2023 by Joni_78

[Joni_78]

All Group Policies were not defined. When signing in the wallpaper changes to this in registry:

Local Settings\Application Data\Sysinternals\BGInfo\BGInfo.bmp

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/bginfo

I checked msconfig for startup programs but nothing there. Nothing related to this in services. How does this run on logon.

Edited October 5, 2023 by Joni_78

[Joni_78]

I was able to stop it by changing BGInfo folder permissions in my account appdata folder so that only my account has access into it. Dunno if there is any side effects like it tries to continually replace it or something.

If anyone knows a proper way to disable this on one specific user please let me know.

[grunger106]

I would advise you to leave well alone unless you know what you're doing, you are trying to remove BGInfo
BGInfo generates a background image with certain info tattooed on it on boot (Boot time, OS Type) Highly useful as you can see at a glace which box you are on and it's current basic info.
 

Leave it alone, or if you are changing it remove it properly, don't start hacking about with it.

[satukoro]

If you haven't already, run the following command in a non-administrative powershell (or command prompt) window from a folder you have write access to.

gpresult /h result.html /f

This will dump all the group policies affecting your current security context. You might not have access to the computer configuration from your current security context so you may have to run it again in an administrative shell to see policies affecting your computer.

Open the result.html file and look for anything targeting either the registry or the desktop wallpaper gp. Most often, I find it here:

• "User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Desktop > Desktop > Desktop Wallpaper"
• or here "User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry" with the registry path "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies" with REG_SZ "Wallpaper" and it's value being the path to the wallpaper JPG or BMP.

If your organization is not using one of these wallpaper applying methods, I suspect they may be using a scheduled task applied via gpo to run at user logon. However a scheduled task would most likely use the aforementioned registry key to set the wallpaper.

Edit: After reading some more of this thread and remembering programs like bginfo exist, there could be something running out of your startup folder (%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup or C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp) on logon. There could be something configured in the taskmgr startup section (try running as admin and as your current security context). Beyond that, I would also check the task scheduler as both admin and your current security context.

Edited October 5, 2023 by satukoro

[Joni_78]

On 05/10/2023 at 16:11, grunger106 said:

I would advise you to leave well alone unless you know what you're doing, you are trying to remove BGInfo
BGInfo generates a background image with certain info tattooed on it on boot (Boot time, OS Type) Highly useful as you can see at a glace which box you are on and it's current basic info.
 

Leave it alone, or if you are changing it remove it properly, don't start hacking about with it.

Yes that's what I would like to do, remove it properly for a single user account, if possible. It does not show any of those and displays only basic information about this particular server that I already know.

[grunger106]

How much time do you spend looking at the desktop background of a server, leave it alone would be my advice.
Spend the time coming up with workflows that don't require you to RDP directly on to servers instead, then you can work from the confines of your own PC which is a better practice anyway!
Are you the sole administrator of this site? If not this is change-control level stuff, not ask on a forum stuff, don't mess about with prod servers for cosmetic stuff like this, you'll break something for the silliest reason.

If you REALLY want to dig into BGINFO then, this is the documentation and yes it will affect all users.
BgInfo - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn
I'd play with rolling it out and then rolling it back before going anywhere prod infrastructure.

[C:Amie]

bginfo is probably running in a login script and if you have permissions you can stop it from running or edit its config file to something more suitable. That said, make sure that you have permission to do it as trouble could soon follow you if this is deemed computer misuse under your corporate policy.

[Joni_78]

On 06/10/2023 at 09:28, C:Amie said:

bginfo is probably running in a login script and if you have permissions you can stop it from running or edit its config file to something more suitable. That said, make sure that you have permission to do it as trouble could soon follow you if this is deemed computer misuse under your corporate policy.

I don't want to disable it completely, just stop it from switching wallpaper on my user account. It clearly runs once on logon so I copied my wallpaper into my user account app data BGInfo wallpaper folder, deleted bginfo wallpaper and renamed my wallpaper to BGInfo.bmp and then removed permissions from that folder from everyone but me so it won't be replaced. So it works now, but would have been nice to just disable something on HKCU or something similar. This is not something you could use as a reason to fire somebody in here, it should be something serious like running a torrent site on a company network.

I know that all of this is stupid but I had enough of that W8 purple, I don't even know why. My wallpaper is plain W2K blue.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Leave it alone. It’s not your job to mess around with. If I found someone had spent time and effort on such things I’d be having strong words with them as a precursor to something more if they persist.