With Win9X, WinME & Win2K:
--> Right-click on your desktop and select properties.
--> From display properties, select the tab for background.
--> Select an image from the list on the left side of the box or
--> Click browse to select an image from another directory on your drive.
--> Chose stretch from the options (center, tile, stretch)
Note: If the image I want to use for a background is a jpg I convert it to a bmp so that I don't have to enable active desktop.