Changing the Default ‘STUDENT’ Wallpaper

What You Need

  • Time to go look for wallpapers

Instructions (if you want to get a correctly-sized wallpaper)

  1. Monitor-dependent search:
    • If you have a square-shaped monitor, look for 1280x1024 wallpapers
    • If you have one of the wide/16:9 monitors, look for 1080p wallpapers or 1920x1080 wallpapers
  2. Out of those results, find a wallpaper you like(make sure it’s ACTUALLY 1280x1024 or 1920x1080) and save it
  3. Open 7-Zip and navigate to where you downloaded it
    • If you happen to have saved it in your school network drive, you can usually get to it by typing H:\ in the top address bar and pressing [Enter]
  4. Click on the file for the wallpaper you just downloaded to select it, and hit the ‘Copy’ button at the top of the window
  5. When it asks where to copy to, type C:\Users\[your student number]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper
    • Make sure there is no backslash after the ‘TranscodedWallpaper’!
    • If it asks to overwrite, say yes
  6. Log out of the computer, then log back in
  7. Your wallpaper should be changed!

Instructions (if you want to crop it yourself)

  1. Look for a wallpaper you like online, and download it. If you want, as an example, you can use this
    • Obviously avoid getting phone wallpapers and low-resolution types unless you really need to
  2. Depending on where you saved it to, use either Explorer or 7-Zip to navigate to it
  3. Go to an online cropping tool (we will use Croppola) and upload your image by dragging it inside.
  4. Set your cropping mode to ‘Manual’
    • If you have a square monitor, set the aspect ratio to 5:4(it is normal if it auto-changes to something else)
    • If you have one of the wide/16:9 monitors, set the aspect ratio to 16:9(it is normal if it auto-changes to something else)
  5. Mess around with the crop settings, size, and position, until you like how it looks
  6. Click on ‘Download this crop’
  7. Open 7-Zip and navigate to where you downloaded it
    • If you happen to have saved it in your school network drive, you can usually get to it by typing H:\ in the top address bar and pressing [Enter]
  8. Click on the file for the wallpaper you just downloaded to select it, and hit the ‘Copy’ button at the top of the window
  9. When it asks where to copy to, type C:\Users\[your student number]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper
    • Make sure there is no backslash after the ‘TranscodedWallpaper’!
    • If it asks to overwrite, say yes
  10. Log out of the computer, then log back in
  11. Your wallpaper should be changed!

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