Bing Desktop not updating the wallpaper anymore

Question

For some reason, first my workstation and then my tablet stopped updating the wallpaper. First I thought it was my company that was avoiding the app to work properly but then I started noticing that the app itself is a mess:

It has two storage and formats for the wallpapers:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingDesktop\en-US\Apps\Wallpaper_5386c77076d04cf9a8b5d619b4cba48e\VersionIndependent\images

with a #####.jpg (single number) image format

&

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingDesktop\themes

with a ####-##-##.jpg (date) image format.

I read here that deleting the themes folder it will get remade with the new images, and it worked. However those are not the files used by the Wallpaper app and deleting the images folder won't get the same result.

I have added Bing Desktop to the Firewall white list and the issue is still there. Any ideas?

Currently I'm using DisplayFusion to place the wallpaper manually because the company doesn't allow change the wallpapers (policies).

Note: I wrote to the DisplayFusion developers to suggest adding a feature to support Bing Wallpapers. They told me there was no API support to implement it but they will study this possibility (workaround) for the future: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10639914/is-there-a-way-to-get-bings-photo-of-the-day

Solution 1

Well, after posting the question I noticed that the wallpaper toolset could be an option to recreate the images folder (I tried a few times before with the folder full and it didn't work). However after deleting the folder it worked.

I reenabled the wallpaper toolset, forced to close Bing Desktop, deleted the image folder, reopened the app, the folder was recreated but it was empty as expected, pressed the refresh button on the toolset and the wallpapers started to appear, even the wallpaper selector was updated (previously appeared with [X] where the images should appear).

Update: it seems like it's also important to erase the folder

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingDesktop\en-US\Apps\Wallpaper_5386c77076d04cf9a8b5d619b4cba48e\VersionIndependent\config

because it contains the list of the images (imagelist.manifest). This way the update will be from scratch.

Solution 2

FWIW, I found this answer trying to fix this same issue. It seems that Microsoft broke or otherwise disabled Bing Desktop in favor of Bing Wallpaper (on Windows 7 at least) for wallpaper rotation. The steps above didn't help me, but I uninstalled Bing Desktop and install Bing Wallpaper (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper) and now I have my backgrounds again.

Solution 3

I did step by step but didn't work, for some reason after I deleted the folders they just reappeared with all the previous images deleted before. So these are the steps I followed to get everything set up already back to normal:

1. Exit the Bing Desktop app

2. Delete Themes folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingDesktop\themes

3. Delete all files in the wallpaper folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\BingDesktop\en-US\Apps\Wallpaper_5386c77076d04cf9a8b5d619b4cba48e

4. Open internet explorer and press Shift+Ctrl+Del or go to Internet options-->delete temporary files

5. Proceed to delete all temporary files

6. Open the Bing Desktop app

At the beginning it'll show what your previous desktop image was but after loading all the information you just go to the Wallpaper section and you'll see that the new image will be there.

Hope this might help you as well.

Comments

[DavidPostill]

This duplicates another answer and adds no new content. Please don't post an answer unless you actually have something new to contribute.

[Tripartio]

@DavidPostill Thanks! I have done as you said; I have flagged the other question as a duplicate and I have deleted my answer there.