How to Set Bing Wallpaper Desktop Slideshow in Windows XP

September 11th, 2009 in Tutorials | 3 comments

Since started testing Windows 7 RC I really enjoy the desktop. Built-in automated desktop wallpaper changing process is awesome. Thanks to Mahendra Palsule on his post explaining how to make use of daily images on Bing, I can now see new images every day or even every hour.

How it's done is basically there is an RSS feed started by Long Zheng bringing you the images shown on Bing and a custom Windows 7 theme takes care of displaying them in a nice slideshow right on your desktop.

What About Good 'Old Whistler

Well using Windows XP for a long time and for good reasons I wondered if I could do the the same in XP.

So in 3 simple steps here is how to achieve the same result -well almost in XP.

Step 1: Get Images from Bing

Subscribe to Bing Image RSS Feed. For this demonstration I will use IE8.

Setup feed properties to download attachments automatically.

Step 2: Move Images to a Better Location

You may ask why? Well, first of all wallpaper changer program -explained in next step can't see the default feed download location which is in temprorary internet files folder. I also wanted to use them with screen saver and it's much easier to setup the screen saver if they are all under "My Pictures" folder.

Lets find where they are located first

Copy the folder path and create a simple batch file in a text editor. Make sure to change the default profile path of your "My Documents" folder according to your PC settings.

move "C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Enclosure\{D68681C3-B36C-4E32-A590-AC85B54D8F4D}\*.*" "C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\My Pictures\Bing"

Save this file in a safe location e.g. "C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\move_bing_images.bat"

Note that in batch file, destination for move command I have created a folder called "Bing" just to keep them separated from other images.

Also, further information on DOS command for curious minds.

Now that we have a working command, let's automate this with a scheduled task.

Go to Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks > Add Scheduled Task

Browse for the batch file "move_bing_images.bat"

Set it as a daily task. Now we have images being downloaded from the internet and automatically moved to "C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\My Pictures\Bing" folder.