Windows 7 Articles » How To: Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

How To: Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

Submitted by Kenneth Pennington on Thursday, 19 February 200918 Comments

When Windows Vista was released a couple of years ago, one of the coolest new features was the ability to add videos as a desktop background. The feature, called DreamScene, was certainly a “dream” of many PC users who had been anticipating moving wallpapers for years. But, DreamScene in Windows Vista was more of a failure than a success. DreamScene never quite caught on as well as Microsoft had hoped.

Still, DreamScene captured the hearts of thousands of PC users. And those users will be saddened to know that Microsoft has stripped the feature from Vista’s predecessor, Windows 7. DreamScene has been replaced by the simpler Desktop Slideshow feature

But, no worries! The feature is easily addable in Windows 7 through a simple program that modifies your registry and copies over the necessary files to enable DreamScene.

To enable DreamScene in Windows 7, do the following:

Warning! To use DreamScene, you must have Windows Aero enabled.

Download Windows7-DreamScene.exe
Run “Windows7-DreamScene.exe” as “Administrator”

The installer will automatically copy the necessary files on to your computer and change your registry.
It will automatically install DreamScene and restart Explorer
DreamScene will be working immediately after the install.
Right-click any WMV or MPG video to set it as your DreamScene desktop background video.

Your wallpaper is now a working video!

Everything works the same as in Windows Vista, except for the Control Panel >> Personalize menu does not show the DreamScene videos as options in Windows 7.
DreamScene tips:

Smaller files work better, the smaller the video, the less lag time in the playback.
Right click your desktop to “Pause” or “Play” your DreamScene wallpaper video.
Try wallpaper videos with sound/audio.

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18 Comments »

Rex said:

I’d like to try it but it wont work for me with win7 x64. Has anyone else gotten it to work?

- 9 March 2009 at 8:02 pm

Kenneth Pennington (author) said:

64-bit might be different. Search “Plus Patch 1.0.1″ on Google and download it. It has a tweak inside it that lets you enable it on 64-bit easily.

Thanks for the comment!

- 9 March 2009 at 9:48 pm

Windows 7 - Custom Login Backgrounds | Window7s said:

[...] How To: Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Although Microsoft has ditched the DreamScene feature in their new… [...]

- 17 March 2009 at 5:08 pm

winwin said:

maybe this works only on 32bit (works on my 32bit pc), .. btw. here is a cool site with free dream scenes (wmv, hd) for Windows 7: http://www.dreamscene.org/

- 25 March 2009 at 12:52 am

Kenneth Pennington (author) said:

As I said above…

“64-bit might be different. Search

- 25 March 2009 at 7:39 am

pyro92005 said:

“…And those users will be saddened to know that Microsoft has stripped the feature from Vista

- 26 April 2009 at 2:43 pm

Anon. said:

“Microsoft has stripped the feature from Vista

- 23 June 2009 at 8:13 am

laila said:

works for me (win7 32-bit). now let’s find some cool dreamscene. I’ve found an interestin one, http://dreamscenevideo.net

If you have more sites, let me know

- 9 July 2009 at 8:01 pm

tomy said:

@laila: here is another great site with free dreamscenes (more than 150 scenes) in HD quality (*.wmv-format, directly compatible to Vista and Windows 7): http://www.dreamscene.org

- 22 July 2009 at 7:32 am

Pre-Order Windows 7 upgrade starting tomorrow - Mustang Forums at StangNet said:

[...] dreamscene isnt part of 7 Ultimate? Windows 7 Articles

- 12 September 2009 at 3:01 am

MicrosoftWarrior said:

I have windows 7 ultimate 64 off MSDN and I got dreamscenes working easily

just “Bing” WINDOWS 7 DREAMSCENE

and go to the hit windows7center dot com

works great, 64 bit

now if I can just get deskcapes working :))

goodnightearth.dream rules!

- 23 September 2009 at 5:37 pm

matt said:

hi i installed this dreamscene for windows 7 a while back and it doesnt work now i cant get it to use videos as desktop background if i try to the background is just black and i have aero on and it still doesnt work plz help

shall i install again and see if that works?

- 7 October 2009 at 7:37 am

matt said:

oh by the way i have 32bit

- 7 October 2009 at 7:37 am

jhon said:

I have windows 7 ultimate installed in my cumputer and this patch didn’t work for me…

- 11 October 2009 at 9:45 pm

Bob said:

The file download is broken: the download site pulled it. Anywhere else we can get it?

- 23 October 2009 at 4:55 pm

MicrosoftWarrior said:

Screww the download, just follow my BING instructions above

32 and 64 bit versions

and reboot!

Win7 Rules
Microsoft Rules!
Stardock Rules!

- 28 October 2009 at 8:13 am

Marcus said:

Windows 7 does not rule, if it did we wouldn’t need to find all these things out for ourselves. Stardock never used to rule for me, because everything I tried of theirs on my XP just kept getting screwed up and messed my registry and a host of other little bits and bobs up. HOWEVER, their free ‘fences’ program for Windows 7 IS worth getting. As for Dreamscene….nope. Doesn’t work at all on my Windows 7 Home Premium 32+64 bit OS. Complete pants and I’ve been looking for someone who knows of a version that actually works!

- 18 December 2009 at 10:40 am

Bob~J said:

It worked for me in Windows 7 64-bit, but the desktop icons kept going partially invisible or ghosting, I could fix it temporarily, but with the next startup it’s back. I cannot remember how I got it to show the icons on a temporary basis, as I removed DreamScene awhile ago, and I’m just checking around again to see if anyone has figured out how to fix the problem.

- 18 December 2009 at 4:08 pm