"Call for Help" recently received an email from Mauricio:

"Is there any way I can use a JPEG file as a single desktop background image without having it tile as multiple images across the desktop?

There sure is. You can customize your wallpaper or background graphic with images on your hard drive or ones that you've found on the Web.

Windows features three different wallpaper display settings: tile, stretch, and center. As Mauricio discovered, the tile setting takes the same image and repeats it over and over until it fills the entire desktop. For smaller images, the tile option may be adequate. But if you have an image that's not quite the same size as your monitor's resolution settings, tiling it might look weird.

The stretch setting takes a single image and stretches it across the entire desktop. This is a great setting for larger wallpaper images. But when you stretch a smaller image across the desktop, the image gets blown up and looks distorted. The center setting is the last alternative. It displays only one image directly in the center of the screen and fills in the rest with a pattern.

Here's how to set an image as your wallpaper in Windows.

1. Right-click on your desktop and choose Properties.
2. Click on the Background tab if you aren't already on it.
3. To set an image as your background, just hit the Browse button.
4. Locate the image on your hard drive and click the Open button.
5. Now, change the Display pull-down menu to a setting of your choice.
6. Click Apply when you're done.

I like to use the center wallpaper setting with a combination of a custom pattern for the rest of the desktop. Windows comes with a list of custom patterns to choose from. While the Desktop Properties dialog box is still open, follow these steps to set a custom pattern.

1. Click the Pattern button on the Background tab of Display Properties.
2. Select an available pattern by individually clicking on it.
3. If you don't like any of the patterns, you can customize them by clicking the Edit Pattern button.
4. In the Pattern Editor, just click on the pattern to add or remove squares. A neat pattern is actually one that's all black. Find a pattern and click on all the green squares to turn them to black.
5. When you're done editing a pattern, click the Change button followed by the Done button.
6. Lastly, click Apply.

No question is too small or too simple for "Call for Help." If you have a basic computing question, send an email to stepone@techtv.com. Chris may answer it on the air.