[Ultimate John]

Use your screensaver as a wallpaper in Windows Vista and emulate the look of Windows DreamScene or Desktop Aurora.
Forget about Vista Ultimate DreamScene Motion Desktop add-on. Now you can have an animated wallpaper on Vista Home Premium edition also.



Run a screensaver on the desktop. But with the added power of DWM, you can get all the cool Glass effects on top of the screensaver, so it’s just like a real wallpaper. Screensavers has always supported the ability to be called to render on any surface to assist in development. But we can also utilize this method to create an interesting desktop background effect.

How to do it

Automatic method
Blog reader Nate, has coded an application which automates the entire process. His application gives you an extremely easy way of selecting the screensaver desire, and makes it even possible to start the screensaver rendering on startup.
Download Nate’s application here (mirror)

Video Guide
You can watch this video showing you the steps you need to take to achieve the same result.
Watch the video

[yoni5002]

This is 4 days old but anyways...

Oh yeah!!! After Dave Vronay from Microsoft’s UX team submitted this tip I just decided to give it a quick try... Results are amazing!! I just created a batch file to execute the "3D wallpaper" in my system when I need to... or you can simply create a shortcut

Here it is Windows Energy Screensaver running as wallpaper in my system (Windows Vista 5728)

See the Video Here (5MB)
Note: you may need XDiv codecs to see this Video. Here is a Codecs pack fully compatible with Windows Vista. You do NOT need to force compatibility to install these codecs...

:globe: Codecs Pack Direct Download

[FalseAgent]

That's RAAD!!

[WhistAler]

How much system resources would be used if you run a screensaver as a wallpaper?

[Hipgnosis]

Awesome! That's great news!

[Windows eXPert]

Nice, though why not just use the simple "Print Scrn" Button on your keyboard?

[cmkumar2k]

excellent.... thanks much..

[Brendo]

Cool, well that is good to know...yet another excuse to get the best hardware available when it comes time to upgrade

[rigg]

yoni5002, on Oct 8 2006, 06:10 PM, said:

This is 4 days old but anyways...

Oh yeah!!! After Dave Vronay from Microsoft’s UX team submitted this tip I just decided to give it a quick try... Results are amazing!! I just created a batch file to execute the "3D wallpaper" in my system when I need to... or you can simply create a shortcut

Here it is Windows Energy Screensaver running as wallpaper in my system (Windows Vista 5728)

really nice, but how did you get the icons on top?

/rigg

[rigg]

WhistAler, on Oct 8 2006, 08:38 PM, said:

How much system resources would be used if you run a screensaver as a wallpaper?

My Intel P-4 3,4 GHz runs at apx. 30% CPU usage when running screenssaver as a wallpaper (no other apps running), but when doing other tasks not needing so much CPU it's worth it.... I'ts really beatiful...

/rigg

[yoni5002]

rigg, on Oct 9 2006, 08:23 AM, said:

WhistAler, on Oct 8 2006, 08:38 PM, said:

How much system resources would be used if you run a screensaver as a wallpaper?

My Intel P-4 3,4 GHz runs at apx. 30% CPU usage when running screenssaver as a wallpaper (no other apps running), but when doing other tasks not needing so much CPU it's worth it.... I'ts really beatiful...

/rigg

My Intel Pentium D 3.0 GHz runs at @2% - 5% PCU usage when running screensaver as wallpaper (Firefox running, and 2 Windows Explorer... Ram 790 MB Ram currently in use. Windows Vista 5744.

rigg, on Oct 9 2006, 08:06 AM, said:

yoni5002, on Oct 8 2006, 06:10 PM, said:

This is 4 days old but anyways...

Oh yeah!!! After Dave Vronay from Microsoft’s UX team submitted this tip I just decided to give it a quick try... Results are amazing!! I just created a batch file to execute the "3D wallpaper" in my system when I need to... or you can simply create a shortcut

Here it is Windows Energy Screensaver running as wallpaper in my system (Windows Vista 5728)

really nice, but how did you get the icons on top?

/rigg

The Top Bar is an application that doen't come with Windows Vista...

You can us either RK Launcher or RocketDock

[Ultimate John]

Quote

Nice, though why not just use the simple "Print Scrn" Button on your keyboard?

This is not a static image but an animated wallpaper on the desktop.

[WinMatrics]

Dude that kicks ass. The glass effect on a screensaver..holy.

[ieadm]

very nice, looks really cool.

[endrit10]

yay! now i can watch porn and rename icons!!!