Change Your Wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition

Chances are high that if you have a netbook of some kind with the Windows 7 Starter OS installed, you’re sick of looking at that same wallpaper over and over again. One of the biggest limitation of Windows 7 Starter is the inability to change your desktop background. This might not be a big deal to a small percentage of users out there but for those that have gotten used to being able to change their wallpaper on the fly for so long, this has got to be one of the most frustrating issue. Good news is that this is no longer the case!

You have three options:

Upgrade Windows 7 Starter edition to Windows 7 Home Premium

Upgrading your operating system is not that expensive but do you really want to do that just for the sake of being able to change your desktop background? If you do want to go this route, you can use the Windows Anytime Upgrade utility to easily proceed.

Install the System Setting utility if you are using an Asus Eee PC

If you are using an Asus Eee PC netbook model, you’ll no doubt notice a dock located at the top of your screen that allows you to access a bunch of different features. Asus has created a special System Setting add-on to this dock that allows Windows 7 Starter edition folks to easily change their background wallpaper and best of all, allow you to even randomly change the wallpaper every X amount of minutes similar to what you could do in higher Windows 7 editions!

All you need to do is manually download and install the System Setting utility from Asus here. Extract the single executable and proceed to install it. Once done so, head back to your Eee Dock, click on Eee Tools (or something similar) and you should now see a new option called System Setting. You will now have the option of manually specifying which wallpaper (or group of wallpapers) to use as your background!

Use Starter Wallpaper Changer for all other netbook owners

This neat little program allows a Windows 7 Starter edition user to change their wallpaper although it lacks the option to randomly switch your wallpaper. This tool is manual in a sense that every time you want to change your wallpaper, you will need to re-run the tool. Simply download the program, run it as Administrator, pick a wallpaper you want to use (picture format should be in JPEG format), log off and then log back in.

 

In the End…

As great of an operating system Windows 7 is, there’s no denying the fact that not being able to change your wallpaper, which is considered a very basic task, can be frustrating. Yes, I’m sure many users can live with it but why should we? I understand removing features from lesser versions of the operating system like Windows Media Center, Bitlocker, being able to join a domain etc. But when you remove one of the most basic, simplest feature users have gotten used to for years, it really starts to piss people off! Luckily, there are ways around this limitation! Just be sure to perform these at your own risk.

Change Your Wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition, 5.0 out of 5 based on 2 ratings