Today, I learned that I'm not very good at multi-tasking. I was trying to reply to two different sets of emails, and I made a mistake with at least one of them. I was receiving and replying to emails from a long-lost cousin and his charming wife down in Georgia, while my old pal from my days with Ontario Hydro in the 1950s was sending me emails asking about his Windows 7, and how to find one of its normally-hidden system folders. He sent me a marked-up screenshot of his problem, but I was so wrapped up in the other conversation, I didn't notice that there was an attachment included on his.
So Pete, if you're reading this, again my humble apologies. And I hope that by now, you've found the Windows Themes folder that's tucked away inside your normally-hidden AppData folder, using the path C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes. Creating your own new Theme in there is easy and fun. Just create a new folder in that Themes one, and give it a name like MyPics, and then open that new one, and inside it create another new one named DesktopBackground. Into it, put the pictures you'd like to use for a new theme, suitably re-sized to match your desktop's native resolution. (Example: mine's 1680 by 1050). Number them consecutively, and the easiest way to do that is to select them all, and then right-click one of them and choose "rename" from the little menu, and then under the first one in the series, type a left bracket, then your number, then a right bracket, and click on Enter.So that's (01) and hit the Enter key. That will not only number the first one, but all the rest of the series consecutively if they were all selected.
Now that you have them numbered, and still all selected, and inside that folder called DesktopBackground, you can again right-click on one of them in the selection and from the menu that appears, choose Set as Desktop Background. When you click that, your monitor's background image will immediately change to one of your new images, and your new theme will be in use. You can exit those windows, clear the desktop, and then right-click an empty spot anywhere on your desktop, to bring up a little menu, on the bottom of which you will see the word Personalize. Click that to open a new window showing your installed Windows Themes. Your own new one should now be displayed in there as a thumbnail under which it says Unsaved Theme. Click to get a little menu on which you can choose Save, and give it a name. Just add a number to that name you used while creating its new folder earlier: MyPics-01. Then look along the lower portion of that main window for the words Desktop Background under another little thumbnail icon. Click on that to open a new window, inside which you will see your currently-running new theme's DesktopBackground folder's contents, with a little check-mark in the upper left corner of each thumbnail. You can remove or add those check-marks by clicking on them, and by doing so, you will be adding or subtracting those particular images from the ones being actively displayed as the theme changes from image to image. They all remain available, but only the ones having a check-mark will be used on your monitor.
Before you leave that window, look along the lower portion for the choices for Picture Position (usually "fill" to fill the whole screen) and Change Picture Every, where you select a time in the little window below those words. The choices range from ten seconds to 24 hours to keep each image visible on the monitor. Pick whatever makes you giggle, and then click on Save Changes, and close the window. You have now created your new theme and it is operating in the Windows system Themes folder, just like Microsoft's original equipment ones. You can make as many as you like. I have over fifty in mine and they're all happy with one another.
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