How to Change your Account Picture and What to do if it Doesn't Work.

First: How To Change Your WinXP User Account Picture.

• Click the Start button
• choose Control Panel
• Click the User Accounts icon and select Change My Picture
• Click on a picture and click the Change Picture button.

• If you don't like the choices offered then click the Browse for More Pictures button.
• A new window appears, this time showing the contents of your My Pictures folder by default, of course you can navigate to any other folder on your hard drive to find your picture.
• Click a desired picture from the folder, choose Open, and click Change Picture.

I did this for my nephews after just upgrading their computer to WinXp, only to discover it didn't work. I keep getting the error message "Automation server can't create object". It wouldn't work no matter if it was one of the built in pictures or a self-chosen one.

I went online to hunt down the problem, and found out it was caused when I disabled the built in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

Why did I disable the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer?

Even if you install a third party program for viewing pictures, it will still open as the default picture viewer, and trying to disable it is a bitch.

It was also revealed that there was a risk of hackers taking control of your system because of a flaw in the system.

A short while ago I read about the WMF vulnerability in the the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. The WMF Exploit could allow an attacker to execute code on the user's system by using a specially crafted Windows Metafile (WMF) image on a malicious Web site.

The recommended way to disable the problem (or problems) was to disable the viewer.

To disable the viewer:

• Logon as an administrative user. Not sure,

• Click the Start button
• choose Control Panel
• Click the User Accounts icon and look for the log-in account that has the words Computer Administrator by it, log-in with that account first, if more than one user has it then anyone can do this ...

.... then

• Click Start button and select Run
• Enter the following text into the "Open" field:

  regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll

• Click OK.

Unfortunately I've just recently discovered if you want to change your user account pictures you can no longer do so.

To reverse the procedure:

• Logon as an administrative user.
• Click Start button and select Run
• Enter the following text into the "Open" field:

  regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll

• Click OK.

On my computer I only have one user signed in so I bypass the sign-in screen altogether and also don't bother with the user account picture. I also have my own program for viewing pictures, ACDSEE v3 http://www.acdsee.com/products/acdsee/ . I have an older system so I'm still using version 3. I beleive it's up to version 8 right now, but experience tells me newer doesn't mean better, in other words, if it aint broke don't fix it.

Microsoft has a few good ideas in theory, but in practice they act like they have rocks for brains. Of course, I can't blame Microsoft completely. I am one of those weird people who has the gall to think that a computer should work the WAY I WANT IT TO WORK! So I like to use programs like XPlite 2000lite Professional http://www.litepc.com to cutomize my system.

Its one of those programs that allows you to remove components and cutomize Windows to your liking. Of course experience tells me that Changing or Fixing Windows in one place is the perfect way to break it in another place. I do it anyway.

When I click on the user accounts icon, on my own system, notepad opens, and an error message:

Cannot open the res:// C:\WINDOWS\System32\nusrmgr.cpl/nusrmgr.hta file

make sure a disk is in the drive you specified.

Again, I don't fool around with user accounts, so , no big deal (but I still haven't figured out how to fix it yet).