Windows 7 (and later versions, to my knowledge) stores the current desktop's wallpaper as a transcoded image file named TranscodedWallpaper.jpg.
In Windows 7, the location of this file isX:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg.
This file gets automatically created by Windows every time the desktop background changes, including in slideshow mode.
I tried created compressed and non-compressed PNG and JPEG files as well as BMP files (all of the proper size, scale, and DPI) for the source background files, but Windows always created this transcoded image file.
Ideally, I would like to have Windows use the direct source file for the wallpaper (without creating an intermediate file), but after much searching, I did not find any reference to this being possible.
Assuming it is not possible to avoid using TranscodedWallpaper.jpg (please correct me if I'm mistaken), I would like to have Window store the transcoded wallpaper file on a RAM disk. How can this be done?
1 Answer
Find and configure a RAM disk software.
Then try from an elevated command prompt mklink /D X:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes" "Y:\wherever\on\your\RAM\disk"
If this works, you probably need to setup a scheduled task to do this on each boot.
