diff --git a/capplets/background/ChangeLog b/capplets/background/ChangeLog
index 36ba88a4a..ab5898630 100644
--- a/capplets/background/ChangeLog
+++ b/capplets/background/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2004-01-12  Diego Gonzalez <diego@pemas.net>
+
+	* gnome-wp-xml.c (gnome_wp_load_legacy): don't crash if we could
+	  not get the file information.
+
 2004-01-12  Jody Goldberg <jody@gnome.org>
 
 	* Makefile.am : As long as we're hard coding the path hard code it in
diff --git a/capplets/background/gnome-wp-xml.c b/capplets/background/gnome-wp-xml.c
index df8f1a927..44b0fc5e1 100644
--- a/capplets/background/gnome-wp-xml.c
+++ b/capplets/background/gnome-wp-xml.c
@@ -81,6 +81,10 @@ static void gnome_wp_load_legacy (GnomeWPCapplet * capplet) {
 	item->filename = g_strdup (foo);
 
 	item->fileinfo = gnome_wp_info_new (item->filename, capplet->thumbs);
+	if (item->fileinfo == NULL) {
+		g_free (item);
+		continue;
+	}
 
 	item->shade_type = gconf_client_get_string (capplet->client,
 						    WP_SHADING_KEY, NULL);