Black Desktop Background on Windows 7 solution

It is quite enjoyable and stunning to see Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones dressed in Black. But to try for the same effect on the PC’s desktop is downright crazy. Trust me, for almost one whole day, I suffered with a Black Desktop.

Mind you this is not the dreaded Black Screen of Death or the blank screen shown when the operating system files are compressed by mistake.

The PC works fine, the desktop icons are visible and every piece of software installed works as designed.  But the Windows 7 desktop is a horrible, dark, blank black.
Yuck!



As written earlier, cleaning junk files with CCleaner 3.27 and Winapp2.ini, while enabling the Tray Notifications Transcoded Wallpaper Cache (disregarding the pop-up warning), probably caused this problem.

Whatever you try to change/fix the desktop by:

• refreshing the desktop as recommended in CCleaner warning;
• accessing Control Panel -> Personalisation and switching to any of the different themes;
• changing either the desktop background or window color;
• accessing Control Panel -> Ease of Access Centre -> Make the Computer Easier to see -> Uncheck Remove Background images (it is not checked in the 1st place, darn it!);
• reinstalling the (NVIDIA) video driver and restarting;
• stopping and restarting explorer.exe via Task Manager; or,
• checking the registry issues as enumerated in this Microsoft Support article (the registry key is perfect, dang it!) [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/why-is-my-screen-black-when-i-start-windows-7], 
• without wanting to try a System Restore;
• starting the PC in Safe Mode and trying to change display settings;
• scanning for malware with SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes AntiMalware and SpyBot S&D (no malware found, for goodness sake!);
• running the Aero Troubleshooter (Control Panel -> Troubleshooter -> Appearance and Personalization -> Display Aero Desktop effects;

was of no use.

BTW, Windows 7 is a genuine version and this is not a tutorial on how to crack Windows Genuine Advantage check.
:-P

As it sometimes happens, the solution, literally, came out of the mouth of babes.  A neighbour’s 10 year old bunked school today because of stomach ache.  As it always happens, the ache disappeared once his dad and mom left for office.  Around noon, his granny, unable to stand his pestering, chased him out to wreck havoc elsewhere.

The kid came sauntering up probably intent on making mischief with my cockatiels   Instead, he became interested in the CCleaner article and engrossed enough to count the number of marked files (from the logs) and spruce up the images, allowing me to pester my mom.
LOL.

To cut the story short, he spotted the black desktop and remembered the technician’s solution when their own PC went dark a couple of months back.  Bless his little heart, his Monday-morning-blues, his school curriculum on computers and his ability to recall file names.

The tip was the technician replacing the file ‘Transcoded Wallpaper’.  Once the tip of the thread is revealed, it was only a matter of unraveling it with Google search.

The Transcoded Wallpaper is a JPG file, introduced in Windows 7, residing at:
C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\

That is file which when corrupted can cause such heartburn.  But as it happens there was no Transcoded Wallpaper at all.  Which made me do something rash.  I deleted the hidden ‘slideshow.ini’ file.



Once done, went back to Control Panel -> Personalisation and switched themes. And it worked.  The desktop was back.



Tip 1: You’ve to unhide the extensions and system files before you may be able to see/identify those files, including the ‘Appdata’ folder.

Tip 2: Try out all the optionslisted, maybe even a System Restore, before finally attempting above.

Tip 3: Do not restart the system immediately after deleting the ‘slideshow.ini’ file.  You have to change themes, desktop background, windows color,  before attempting restart.

Tip 4: Try out all the options, one-by-one, taking a moment in between, while attempting to change themes, desktop background, windows color.  It takes about a second or two for the system to sort of shrug itself and renew the desktop.

update:  Corrected the reference to Tray Notifications Cache to Transcoded Wallpaper Cache as pointed out by Robert Ward.  Thanks +Robert.

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