>>Haven't had an image on desktop in years - not even icons - but now that I tried, it seems that XP will accept only .bmp! I seem to remember W2K used to accept .jpg... or were they converted behind the scenes?
>>
>>I know that bmp is Microsoft's favorite format because it's not compressed (one of the reasons the HW manufacturers have always loved Windowses - they always needed more horsepower and storage). But what was the Active Desktop... a web page, right? And what were the webpage formats all about? JPG, GIF, PNG, right?
>>
>>So, what gives? The file selector in the desktop properties dialog won't show any file but .bmp, period.
>>
>>XP SP1, using bbLean/TotalCmd/Launchy instead of WinExp.
>
>
>I can select ANY image to be a wallpaper on my XP box. (I don't care that after that XP converts it to BMP) :-)
>Unfortunately I can't test this right now. I have only Server 2003 here.
>
>Oops! My XP was with SP2 on it.

This is becoming interesting. I've discovered the true meaning of BMP extension - it means "background file" - and furthermore, the file selector allows other extensions as well, it's "all picture files (*.bmp;*.gif;*.jpg;*.jpeg;*.dib;*.png)", and shows them if I navigate to a directory containing them, but they still won't show on my desktop... It accepted one smaller .png file, but not anything larger (as in "as tall as the screen resolution"). It will not accept any .jpg at all - and even the one it accepted will not show up on the listbox.

Never mind, I'll stick to my favorite: none.