32. Unhide Country Desktop Background Themes
If you live in countries such as United States, United Kingdom,
Canada, South Africa, and Australia you will notice that when
you want to change your desktop background Windows 7 will
display a country specific desktop background theme as well as the
standard desktop themes already available.
What many users are not aware of is that all of the current
country specific desktop background themes are actually available
but they are hidden. If you want to see what the other desktop
backgrounds look like proceed as follows:
1. Before you can see the new desktop themes you need to
unhide the hidden files and folders along with the
system and
protected operating system files. To do show the hidden files and
folders see this link
04 Show
Hidden Files, Folders And Disks.
2. After you have disabled the show hidden files and folders in
the Folder and Search option View tab, scroll down to the
Hide
protected operating system files (Recommended) option and remove
the check mark (tick) from the box on the left of this option too.
See Fig: 1.
Fig: 32-1 Folder Options
3. A warning message will appear. Just Click on the
OK button.
4. Next Open windows explorer and Click on the
chevron (>) next
to your C: drive.
5. The C: drive directory list will now appear.
6. Click on the chevron (>) next to the Windows folder to
expand the Windows directory further.
7. In the Windows directory, Click on the
Globalization folder.
8. In the Right hand pane of the Globalization folder you will
see a folder called MCT. Remember if you have disabled the show
hidden files and folders and the operating system files you will
not be able to see the MCT folder. See Fig: 2.
Fig: 32-2 Windows Explorer window showing the Globalization and
MCT folders
9. Click on the MCT folder to open it.
10. You will now see a list of 5 folders: MCT AU, MCT CA, MCT
GB, MCT US and MCT ZA. These correspond respectively to Australia
(AU); Canada (CA); United Kingdom (GB); United States (US) and
South Africa (ZA).
11. Select which country you wish to use as a theme and Click
on the folder.
12. Once the folder opens Click on the Theme folder you find
inside.
13. Finally, Click on the Windows theme, i.e., AU; CA; GB; US;
or ZA to install the relevant country.
14. Your Desktop should now display the country
desktop
background you have chosen.
15. To turn the desktop theme into a slide show, Right Click on
the Desktop and select Personalize.
16. In the Personalization window, Click on the
Desktop
Background Slide Show option at the bottom of the personalization
window.
17. From here you can choose the picture position and also how
long it takes for each image to change on your desktop.