Vista: How To Display a Dual Monitor Wallpaper
September 12th, 2007
If you are running a dual monitor setup and want to display a wallpaper so that it stretches across both displays follow these steps:
First, you will need a wallpaper that is wide enough to cover both displays. If both of your monitors are the same size, then you need a wallpaper that is twice the width of your primary monitor. It would resemble something like this:
Now you are ready to set the display.
1. Right-click the Desktop and select Personalize.
2. Select Desktop Background.
3. Browse to the directory that contains your wallpaper image and then select it by clicking on the thumbnail.
4. Your wallpaper will instantly change to the selected image, the problem is that the same image is on both monitors:
5. To properly display the image across both monitors, you need to select the Tile radio button from the bottom where it says How should the picture be positioned?.
6. Your wallpaper will now display across both monitors:
7. Click OK.
By the way, the image I used for this can be found here.

September 13th, 2007 at 5:50 am
very informative! i still use Ultramon (http://ultramon.com ) for my wallpaper management w/multiple monitors.
peace
September 14th, 2007 at 7:32 am
thanks for the comment
September 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am
[…] This is some tutorial made by Digital Streets blog that explain a bit on how you can adjust the setting for the dual monitor to display wallpaper…read more adv_username = “syazone”; adv_gid = “syazone_default”; adtype = “336×280″; […]
September 17th, 2007 at 12:48 am
HiShamansTears,
Nice article.
Cheers!
September 20th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Bravo. Thanks for the tips. I’m now just left 1 problem is that how to change the identifier from 1 to 2 and vise versa.
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 am
I’ve tried this with different sized images and all just tile individually on each screen.
October 24th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I just have one question thou, my montitors are ajar meaning one is higher than the other but still connected, and when i do that on my 2nd monitor the image seems to cut itself off about 3/4’s of the way down the screen and then shows the top so the 2nd monitor looks funky cause i can see the top and bottom merging about 3/4s of the way down my screen, anyone know how to fix this?
November 5th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I actually wrote a utility for dual-desktop wallpaper. It doesn’t handle one single wide image (since as you point out, that’s built in), but it lets you assign a separate bitmap to each monitor, and takes into account monitors that aren’t lined up evenly. It works pretty well, and responds to config changes if it’s running at the time: http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2007/10/02/5246528.aspx
March 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Brilliant!
What an easy an perfect solution.
Pity that Vista makes it again complicated.
keep on
Uwe
April 19th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Re: I’ve tried this with different sized images and all just tile individually on each screen.
Answer: You MUST browse to the picture first, and then choose tiling. (As opposed to right-clicking image, choosing ‘Set as Desktop Background’)
May 21st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
[…] you can’t just right click the image and select it to be the background. If you do that, it simplhttp://blogs.tech-recipes.com/shamanstears/2007/09/12/vista-how-to-display-a-dual-monitor-wallpaper/dmb - Dual Monitor BackgroundsDual Monitor Backgrounds is the largest dedicated collection of free […]
June 25th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Brandon, that’s the exact problem I was having. Thanks for the answer.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
[…] you can’t just right click the image and select it to be the background. If you do that, it simplhttp://blogs.tech-recipes.com/shamanstears/2007/09/12/vista-how-to-display-a-dual-monitor-wallpaper/Royal Village Trailer Court THROUGH Royal West Roofing And Sheet …Royal vista Marketin, Inc […]
September 25th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Errors on compile with Visual Studio 2008 fixed the following in WallpaperSelectedEventArgs.cs
error in complile-
class WallpaperSelectedEventArgs
correct-
public class WallpaperSelectedEventArgs
October 7th, 2008 at 10:52 am
hey thanks for the helpful walkthorugh…I ceratinly would wanahave the sample wallpaper you have on the start
November 28th, 2008 at 5:05 am
That’s great article i was just looking for this…
thanks dude
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:57 am
ShamansTears thank you for the nice how to. And Brandon your response finished the job for me. Did not have to download ultramon.
February 7th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Great post, helped me right out!
It`s said Vista is more intuitive, but i seriously doubt it
Thanks again!
March 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Note!!! I was only able to get my computer to tile to the right. My dual is a 720P TV, and it’s to the left of my computer, so I thought that I’d make the image to the left(also, screen cap’s work to the left). But that ended up in epic fail. learned to make the dual on the right of the main (image wise) and works fine.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:02 am
I always find monitors wall paper refreshing a sit helps tp uolift the mood.