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So I am in a situation where my wallpaper is locked to a specific image on my work computer via group policy. I can't change it via the Personalization settings since it is grayed out and says it has been set by the system administrator.

Anyone know some local GPO and/or registry hackery I can do to override the domain's policy? I could probably get away with logging in under a local account for this, but I want that to be a last resort.

Thanks in advance.

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They call it "policy" for a reason. Even if you knew what registry value to change, the policy would be reapplied the next time your computer processed policy. – William Jackson May 23 '11 at 13:18
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Any changes you make to your local GPO will be over riden by the domain GPO. – Joe Taylor May 23 '11 at 13:18
That said, do you know the location of the file that is used for the desktop background? Can you take the wallpaper you want and save it in that location? – William Jackson May 23 '11 at 13:19
As @William said, its there for a reason. Even if you do mange to get into the reg and change the key, policies tend to update every half hour or so, so this will just revert it back – beakersoft May 23 '11 at 13:24
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Even if there were a hack, GPO is rechecked and reset regularly and each time you log in.

I assume this policy was probably created as an over-reaction to potentially offensive desktop background images.

Petitioning your IT org to change this setting and simply rely on people making the right choice or getting talked to by their managers may be a more effective solution.

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Great points but this is more or less an issue because system admins like to play jokes (like setting people's wallpaper to hello kitty). I'll simply just use a local account :) – Robert Dailey May 23 '11 at 14:42
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Ahh, those mischievous sysadmins. They are so very clever. Can't say I've never done that, but it could result in an anonymous complaint to a corporate anti-bullying line... – music2myear May 23 '11 at 14:45
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