Stuck Wallpaper

[Rich24]

One of my users tried to install new wallpaper on her Win XP PC. She found a picture of a beach with shimmering water on the internet (she doesn't remember where she got it). She right-clicked > Set as Background. It set a small 2”x 2” picture on the center of her desktop. So she tried to stretch it and of course it came out all distorted, but the shimmering water really slowed down the PC. I tried to change it to No Wallpaper. The screen flashed blue. The left quarter of the screen stayed blue and the other ¾’s of the screen went back to the stretched out wallpaper. I tried a few different wallpapers, stretched, centered and tiled them, but it keeps coming back. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[linney]

Did you try System Restore?

Does Task Manager give you a clue to anything besides Explorer that is using excessive CPU cycles?

The shimmering water doesn't seem like a normal background file. I did see some reference (via Google) to a Java Applet being required to cause this.

Try something like these to check out all your Auto Starting programs.

http://www.diamondcs.com.au/index.php?page=asviewer

Or use the "Hijack This" program from this link.

Removing adware & spyware
faq608-4650

 

[Rich24]

Thanks linney.

I figured it out just before I left work. This was a window that looked like the desktop, that covered the desktop. I put the cursor near the top of the screen and a tool bar popped down with the option to close it. It did not return after I rebooted. I don't know what it was, but I think its gone. Thanks for the tip on the auto-start program. I'm sure that will come in handy.

Have a good weekend!

 

[markdmac]

Sounds like you were configured with Active Desktop and had a web page set as the background.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark