Desktop Wallpaper through group policy for Windows 8 client

active-directorygroup-policywindows 8windows-server-2008-r2

I Have Windows 2008R2 server with active directory.

All client systems are Windows 8/8.1 Pro.

I need to push corporate wallpaper through AD GPO on client system, I have created a shared folder on server with .jpg file in it and given its shared path is GPO for setting up wallpaper.
After creating policy and testing it on one of client system it works and it applies the wallpaper.

Now the problem is that whenever we change wallpaper file in shared folder it does not get updated on client system. Client system still shows previously applied wallpaper.

Strange thing is on client system under "Personalize—> Desktop Background" it shows newly updated wallpaper's thumbnail image, but it is not getting applied.

After doing some search I came across few articles from technet, but that did not help.

http://support2.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;977944

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

This is because when the computers run group policy, they don't see a newer version number for the wallpaper GPO they have, and therefore don't reprocess the GPO, so they use the settings they cached when they fetched that GPO. Try running a gpupdate /force on one of the computers with the old wallpaper to verify that this is the cause. (If the wallpaper updates after running that command, that's the problem).

Going forward, you can deal with this by either following up a wallpaper change with a gpupdate /force to all your clients, or by simply making a change in the GPO after a wallpaper change. Personally, I'd recommend changing the GPO - the most obvious way that comes to mind is by changing the filename of the wallpaper each time (add a version number to the end, for example, corpwallpaperv2.png) and updating the GPO to fetch to the new version.

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