Need to push a mass desktop background change

First set the wallpaper you want in the user profile. Then with GPMC, go to Administrative Template \ Control Panel \ Display and set Prevent changing wallpaper setting to Enable . Then go to Administrative Template \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ Active Desktop and set Active Desktop Wallpaper to enable, put your wallpaper on a public share and input the UNC path in this setting.

Your XP user won't be able to change the wallpaper at all.. I use this setup here at work in a school and students are totally unable to change the wallpaper.

Of course that doesn't affect OS X user but that's obvious..

Hope this help.

I experienced the same problem as you described above...

If you applied all your aforementioned items (registry/hotfix) and you are still experiencing issues, you can try rebooting the "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager" Service and see if the wallpaper appears. If this fixes it, then you can create a batch script that will restart this service upon login. I know this is a kludge, but it's better than nothing.

As for me (and as of today with the latest stock windows updates), I did not apply the registry update and I did apply the hotfix. This hotfix resolved my issue...

The hotfix I am referring to is kb977944. It can be downloaded from Microsoft without any waiting by clicking the "View and request hotfix downloads" at the top of the KB.

Hope this helps someone...

Andy