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
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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
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June 25th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Brandon, that’s the exact problem I was having. Thanks for the answer.
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