Windows 7 Starter: Like my background? Well, you’re stuck with it!

When we get Windows 7 Starter Edition Build 7068,  we are treated to this nice desktop as a default:

Pretty, right? No.  This is a take off of the fish wallpaper in the beta of Ultimate: 

Well, you say, I don’t like these very much.  I’ll just change them.  Wrong!  In Windows 7 Starter Edition Build 7068, you may not enter the Display Prefrences control panel section to change the background.  You are stuck with a gray fish forever.

Even other methods of changing it such as from Windows Photo Gallery do not work. Rafael from Within Windows explains the situation like this:

As for the technical side, a new licensing bit was introduced –ChangeDesktopBackground-Enabled. On Starter Edition SKUs, this bit is set to 0, disabling background setting capabilities in Windows Photo Viewer and the Display/Theme Control Panel applets. The infection goes deeper into system files shell32.dll and themeui.dll too, hard-coding the wallpaper to %windir%webwallpaperwindowsimg0.jpg.

As many times before, he has found a workaround, suggesting that one can log in as adminstrator and reset the permissions on img0.jpg, then overwrite the file. Another alternative would be to use third-party software. 

The inability to change wallpaper now adds on to Microsoft’s list of features to take away or dumb down in Starter.You can view a chart showing full comparison of major features in each of the SKUs here. Here are a few of the main ones:

• Three application limit (not counting Antivirus software and background processes)
• Aero Theme
• Windows Touch Features
• Windows Media Center
• DVD Playback
• Less games

Starter will not be for sale in the US, except on some netbooks, so this is not a problem for us, but this is sad for other users.  We will keep you up to date on all Windows 7 News.