The basics: how to change the desktop background

1. Right click the desktop and select Personalize.

2. From the window that opens, select Desktop Background.

3. From the following dialog window, you can choose the location of the picture on your hard drive, or visit folders that have Windows default backgrounds. The Windows wallpapers offer sleek and modern high resolution backgrounds to get you started with customizing your Windows experience.

4. From the same screen, you can choose how the picture should be positioned, which means you can stretch the picture to fit the screen, tile it, center it, or keep it the original size.

The personalization of the Windows Vista desktop only begins with the background picture. For those with Windows Vista Ultimate, the option to play movies as a desktop may be appealing. Windows Dreamscenes needs to be installed on the operating system. Microsoft offers Dreamscenes as a free download from Windows Ultimate extras updates. After installing Dreamscenes, users have an option under Picture Location named Windows Dreamscenes. From there any default Dreamscene movie background becomes available. You can also select a personal .wmv file on your PC. This gives you the ultimate in desktop customization.