Windows 98 question

[The J.A.M.]

[...unWARP!!!]<br><br>Good evening.<br><br><br>Is there a way to edit the win.ini file so that Windows chooses a random pic for the wallpaper on each startup? A while back I had a screen saver program that did that...never did figure out how...<br><br><br>Zacatepngolas!<br><br>Until next time, remember:<br><br>I<br><br>AM<br><br>THE<br><br>J.A.M.<br><br>Good evening.<br><br>[WARP!!!]

[dragonranpu]

Well concidering that 98 doesn't really use the WIn.ini file execpt for compatability purposes and that image is controled by the registry. So editing the win.ini file will not make is change the boot image. I do know that there are programs out there (one is called bootskins) that will change the image. I am not sure which key in ther registry controls the boot image though.<br><br>Now if you are looking for random walpaper for the desktop yoou should check out webshots. www.webshots.com<br><br>Jope this helps.

[Dr. Doog]

RjlsoFTWARe.com. I thiNK THEy have A PRogram LIKE that. I'm usinG THEiR keY LOCK chANGER proGRAm Right NOw.

[Tavis]

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too big a deal to construct a script in the Autoexec.bat file to say, copy a random file to the Windows folder as something like "desktop.bmp", and set Windows to use that image as the background. I don't remember what random number generator command you can use in batch if at all, but it seems likely there is one.

[Softpaw]

AUTOEXEC.BAT runs before Windows loads, it'd have to be an on-bootup script using Windows Scripting Host. Not impossible, but people familiar with win scripting seem to be hard to find.<br><br>My recommendation is to get an old copy of Webshots (before they started charging money for images), which will automatically cycle at any interval as long as the tray icon is running.

[Richard K Niner]

The code described by Tavis would look as follows:<br><br><!--c1--> <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->@echo off<br>set min=1<br>set max=256<br>:randomdesktop<br>set /a x=(%random% % %max%)+%min%<br>set x = %x%.bmp<br>if not exist %x% goto randomdesktop<br>if exist %WinDir%\desktop.bmp del %WinDir%\desktop.bmp<br>copy %x% %WinDir%\desktop.bmp<!--c2--></td></tr></table> <!--ec2--><br><br>This code requires that the desktop backgrounds are bmp files, and are located in the same folder as this script, and the files are numbered 1.bmp to 256.bmp - if they are numbered over any other range, the min and max variables should be altered to reflect that. Also, the desktop background would have to be set to C:\WINDOWS\desktop.bmp (where C is the drive that Windows is installed on).<br><br>Unfortunately, I have no way of checking whether the above code is valid in Windows 98. (I know it works in 2000 and XP).

[Dr. Doog]

2000 and XP are just updated versions of MS's hack of OS/2 and windows 3.1-- I mean... they're based on NT, not DOS.

[Tavis]

K. Niner posted something very close to what I was suggesting. I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the filenames and listing them in the program, but I like the elegant nature of this solution.<br><br>I mean, Batch files are quite powerful little things when you know what you are doing. I was thinking either include code like that directly in autoexec.bat or in a batch file elsewhere. In the former case, I'd add another variable (using set on config.sys) to set the wallpaper directory, like %walldir%

[Dr. Dos]

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