Where is Win 10 hiding background pictures?

[Curt]

Former title: Where is Win 10 hiding wallpapers?
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I wanted to test a wallpaper-changing program on my PC, x64 Windows 10 Home, so I went to desktop right-click > Private Settings > Background > Background > Picture (not Slideshow or Color, but Image / Photo / Picture), and was chocked to see a picture of my ex!! Understand that I know for sure that I deleted this picture long ago, and I am not aware of any copy anywhere on my PC! Nevertheless, Explorer presented me with the option to have her be my wallpaper again, so somewhere there obviously is a copy! The picture is only available via Settings..., it is not saved in the normal Pictures folder, or in any public folder. I have searched for several hours, but I haven't found any option to navigate to this particular picture, or to delete it.

In the old days (incl. Win 7), any wallpaper would be wallpaper.bmp, but nowadays I am unable to find where Windows is hiding the (backgrounds and) wallpapers. Of course the official address for me is C:\Users\Curt\Pictures , but as I said, I have long time ago deleted the original of that particular picture, so it isn't there, now!

Do you have any idea where Windows might be hiding this picture?

[rgdot]

When I make an image a wallpaper (from Firefox's 'Set as background' for example)

It is C:\Users\RG\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\CachedFiles\

[Curt]

yeah, but no.
Yeah, that is where (the cache of) the wallpaper of the moment is. 
But No, that is not from Private Settings > Background > Background > Picture ~ Choose Your Picture

3 of the other available 5 pictures to choose from, are from Microsoft Windows itself. On a new setup, they would of course all 5 be from Microsoft.

 

[KodeZwerg]

Another Location could be "c:\Windows\Web\" with its sub-folders.

C:\Users\RG\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\CachedFiles\

-rgdot (August 14, 2018, 09:58 AM)

Thats same for non-Firefox Wallpaper functions.

[KodeZwerg]

Sorry, after re-reading i hope i have what you want.
Open Registry Editor (RegEdit.exe) and go to "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wallpapers"

[Curt]

It turns out I originally created the wallpaper using IrfanView,
so now C:\Users\Curt\AppData\Roaming\IrfanView\  was the place to delete the offending picture (the entire IrfanView folder).

-thank you, KodeZwerg! 

[KodeZwerg]

You are welcome!

[IainB]

A search in Everything of C:\ \wallpaper (type "Picture") could turn up quite a lot of the older/"legacy" Windows wallpaper images. Many might well have the Bing watermark.

[Curt]

... delete the offending picture (the entire IrfanView folder).

-Curt (August 14, 2018, 02:51 PM)

-WRONG!

It takes a long time to do the IrfanView settings AGAIN. So deleting the entire folder was a stupid idea. 

[Shades]

You can use irfanview just fine in "portable mode". For years I use an archive from the irfanview folder on every computer in my control. Always worked from Windows XP till Windows 10, including the Server editions. Now I do not use/store settings with it, but you could try to store yours in the irfanview folder itself. Create a new archive from that folder and store that archive in a safe place. When you need it again, just extract the archive in the desired location and you can continue working as if nothing happened within a few seconds.

My personal software repository for portable apps is almost 12GByte in size and consists of tools that were made available as portable app by their creators or made portable by myself, using a piece of software called: Cameo.

Doing things this way, it is possible for me to rebuild a Windows system from scratch in about 2 hours (with spinning disk HD's), barely any other configuration required. 

[KodeZwerg]

I use IView too, i've configed it to store settings in program folder .ini file (aka Portable Mode).
So deleting "\AppData\Roaming\IrfanView\" would not cause any harm on my system.