Cannot get my wallpaper to stretch across dual monitors

singularity said:

I have 2 Samsung SyncMaster 2243 monitors running off of a ATI Radeon 4670 graphics card.

I have downloaded some wallpapers that are wide enough to cover both monitors (large panoramas atc). But it just displays whatever will fit on my main monitor and duplicates it on the secondary monitor (This is only the case with my wallpapers, not the rest of the desktop: shortcuts, start menu etc.). I'm sure this is just a user error on my part. What am I missing?

edit: If I choose the "tile" option. It will ALMOST do what I want. The picture will extend across both monitors, but if it is not quite long enough/tall enough it will start the tiling.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Darician said:

The one advantage to tiling versus DisplayFusion (at least in the free version) is that you can choose different backgrounds and have them change thanks to the Windows 7 Slideshow function.

Click to expand...

Ganjafreak420 said:

I've had a problem like this before.

You need to find the size of both of you're monitors. Add it togather and that is the size of resolution you need for the picture.

It will work.

Click to expand...

Ganjafreak420 said:

Hm. Are you're monitors linked as different ones so it shows 2 on the GFX card or are they linked as one so the taskbar stretches all the way across both screens and does not repeat both.

I had my monitors setup so the left was main but they both worked at the same time doing the same stuff like my start orb was on left one and end of the taskbar with notifications are was on the right one on the far right.

Is that how yours operates.?

Click to expand...

werezwolf said:

I think I may have found the solution. Bear with me, as stupid problems require stupid solutions/workarounds.

I think Windows Photo Viewer may be to blame.

AMEN! werezwolf, you R-O-C-K!!! I have been suffering this problem for the past year and never knew why! Yeah, if I Googled it, 99% of the posts were about how to go about this, I should Tile it, or that the image had to be of certain dimensions. I knew all that, had done all that, and was aware of all that, making a living in I.T. But, on my Windows 7 machine, it just would not work. I was getting the same image on both monitors, but not across! All this time, I was using the stupid MS Photoviewer. It never ever occurred to me that the viewing software was to blame. I was about to give up completely in desperation. That;s when I stumbled on this post!! After I read it, I re-installed the fabulous Irfanview, and, voila!, every one of my dual screen wallpapers work! Thank you so much, werezwolf! This is why I love the Internet - there are helpful people giving smart answers to baffling questions!

Click to expand...

werezwolf said:

I think I may have found the solution. Bear with me, as stupid problems require stupid solutions/workarounds.

I think Windows Photo Viewer may be to blame.

When I first downloaded a dual screen background, I saved it, and opened it with the standard default of Windows Photo Viewer. It previewed the picture like normal.
From within Windows Photo Viewer, if you right click the image and choose “Set as desktop background” it gets cached to:
C:\Users\%yourprofilename%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer (1)

You will see the above location displayed if you go to the Desktop Background screen (Right click your desktop, choose Personalize, click Desktop Background)
Apparently this is the kiss of death for dual screen wallpaper expanding, because anytime I had a picture here, despite being on Tiled mode, (or switching modes and going back to Tiled), it WOULD NOT DISPLAY ACROSS TWO SCREENS.

Retarded, right? So here’s what I did. Using my vast powers of anti-logic, I navigated to the location on my drive where the image was actually stored, and then from explorer I right clicked the image and chose “Set as desktop background”.

Wouldn’t ya know it, BAM! The background expanded correctly across both screens, no more cloning, or expanding the height while still tiling. It just worked. If at this point it’s not working for you, be sure to go back to the Desktop Background screen, and reselect Tile mode. (you should also see that the file path referenced above has changed to reflect the file’s actual location)

By this point it goes without saying, make sure the image you are trying is 2x the width of your one monitor (but even if its not, you should still see it tiling correctly, not cloning itself twice)

System specs as follows:
Win 7 Enterprise 64bit SP1
Dual GTX460s (Running my 2 displays just off the one card though at the moment)
Dual screens, 1920x1080 for 3840x1080 spanned image dimension.

Click to expand...