Can someone PLEASE let me know how to change my desktop settings in Vista?

[Scotius]

I have a Nikon D3000 which takes shots that are wider in ratio
to their height than my monitor is. When I was running XP, it
automatically displayed the wallpaper as widescreen, with bars at the
top and bottom.
My Vista set up doesn't do that automatically and I don't know
how to make it happen. I'm no expert, but I've managed to do a little
more in terms of fixing things than a lot of comp owners who aren't
programmers have, but this baffles me, despite the fact there are
probably teenagers in this city who use a machine 20 minutes a week
who would know. And that actually drives me a little bit nuts.
At least at this point it would be a short trip from where I'm
at to nuts.
Can anyone help?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I have a Nikon D3000 which takes shots that are wider in ratio
to their height than my monitor is. When I was running XP, it
automatically displayed the wallpaper as widescreen, with bars at the
top and bottom.
My Vista set up doesn't do that automatically and I don't know
how to make it happen. I'm no expert, but I've managed to do a little
more in terms of fixing things than a lot of comp owners who aren't
programmers have, but this baffles me, despite the fact there are
probably teenagers in this city who use a machine 20 minutes a week
who would know. And that actually drives me a little bit nuts.
At least at this point it would be a short trip from where I'm
at to nuts.
Can anyone help?

Go here:
Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Desktop
Background

On the lower left corner of that screen is a tab giving a few choices for
how the wallpaper will fit.

Since this is a Windows 7 machine and I don't have access to a Windows
Vista machine, you might have to vary the above a little. Consider, for
instance, right clicking on the desktop and choosing "Personalize", and see
where that takes you.

 

[Nil]

I have a Nikon D3000 which takes shots that are wider in ratio
to their height than my monitor is. When I was running XP, it
automatically displayed the wallpaper as widescreen, with bars at the
top and bottom.

My Vista set up doesn't do that automatically and I don't know
how to make it happen.

I don't think Windows ever did quite what you're describing, at least
not without some help, like a third-party product. Both XP and Vista
have the same options for displaying wallpaper: Center, Tile, and
Stretch (Vista calls it "Fit to Screen"). The closest one is "Center",
which may give you bars, but it won't necessarily fit the whole picture
on the screen if it's too long in any dimension.

I like to use the free picture viewer Irfanview
(http://www.irfanview.com/). While you're viewing any picture, you can
choose to make it your wallpaper, and it has one more option that
Windows itself doesn't have, "Stretched (Proportional)". This will
resize the picture so that its largest dimension fills the screen and
will let the desktop background color show as bars where there is any
unoccupied space.