Not using an SD card. Doesn't matter if I use one of the pre-installed wp or my own photo or a zedge wp. Made a nice theme last nite, 20 minutes later it has some pinkish orange little girlie wp on it. Google some info on the issue and apparently it goes back for years. Nothing mentioned with the 10 tho. I factory reset twice after receiving the phone last week. The heck of it is I'm liking HTC sense or I'd just go back to my fav action launcher. Thanks for responding, gonna keep digging.
EDIT: Figured it out, I had an old wallpaper maker app stuffed in a file that had somehow activated itself, probably when I swapped my stuff over to the new phone. In any case buried in it's settings was a switch that I never turned on, didn't even know it was an option, and it was activated. Got rid of it. Whew, what a relief.