[beethoven]

I have a four-year-old PC (XP Home, SP2 or 3), with only 512 MB of RAM. It works for most needs, but I know I do need a new PC or at least more RAM soonish. I recently had re-enabled Fast User Switching after some time of not using it. Pretty quickly I started noticing two problems, on occasion only:
1) My desktop wallpaper would vanish, and revert to a blue screen. I was using Webshots Desktop at the time.
2) Upon switching user, I would get Value Creation Failed messages and eventually get to the old logon page, not the Welcome screen.

I did some research, and found that the Value Creation Failed messages were often tied to themes, etc. I promptly uninstalled Webshots, WindowBlinds, and Logon Studio and went to the standard Bliss wallpaper. I haven't had a Value Creation Failed error since. However, the wallpaper continues to disappear. I think it usually, if not always, happens when my memory is taxed. I have two desktops logged on at a time, each using Firefox. So a pretty good chunk of memory and virtual memory is being used.

I'm pretty sure there is not malware involved. Both Spybot and AVG are updated and consistently giving my PC a clean bill of health. The problems started with reenabling Fast User Switching.

Today, I also noticed some images online not wanting to load. They show up as black boxes only. After a couple refreshes they eventually load, but it still bugs me. Not sure if it's related or not.

So I'm wondering if these might be symptoms of being low on memory as I already know I am. It seems somewhat logical to me that Windows might disable my wallpaper when it gets in a memory crunch (and I found all of one site elsewhere that suggests Server 2003 at least did this), and same with images not fully loading. Is there a good likelihood this is the problem, or any other suggestions? It's not an Active Desktop, nochangingwallpaper registry key, or normal settings issue. Thanks!

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I would start by running process explorer and monitor the RAM usage and what exactly is eating it up when the background decides to change.

[diabillic]

I would start by running process explorer and monitor the RAM usage and what exactly is eating it up when the background decides to change.

[Alzeimer]

Depending how much things you have running at boot or running in the background and programs your using at the moment then i think its probably due to not enough memory.

[pcs365_2]

Hi,
I would like to suggest you to download CCleaner utility from the below link:
http://www.filehippo...nload_ccleaner/

Install it and clean all temporary files and check in startup to disable all the softwares that you don't use often.

Make sure you don't run Registry Cleaner which is included in this utility.

After running this utility restart your machine, everything should work normally.

[beethoven]

Ccleaner didn't help. I've never actually seen the background change. I just get back to the desktop, often from switching users, and it's different. I have the regular Task Manager open all the time, and the only things using noteworthy memory are Firefox and occasionally iTunes. If you guys also suspect it could be a memory problem, then I feel better making that assumption. I'm planning on adding more in a few weeks here, so hopefully that will solve the problem.

[123Runner]

512 MB of RAM is very low by todays standards. I do not suspect that is the entire problem.
Lets do some basic cleanup.
===========================================================================================
Please download ATF Cleaner by Atribune.
Double-click ATF-Cleaner.exe to run the program.
Under Main choose: Select All
Click the Empty Selected button.
If you use Firefox browserClick Firefox at the top and choose: Select All
Click the Empty Selected button.
NOTE: If you would like to keep your saved passwords, please click No at the prompt.
If you use Opera browserClick Opera at the top and choose: Select All
Click the Empty Selected button.
NOTE: If you would like to keep your saved passwords, please click No at the prompt.
Click Exit on the Main menu to close the program.
For Technical Support, double-click the e-mail address located at the bottom of each menu.
[/list]==================================================================================================
Download Auslogics Defrag from the link in my signature below. Auslogics Defrag in my opinion is better because:
It does a more comprehensive job at Defragging
It will actually show you what it is doing
At the end of working it will show you how much speed you picked up
You can view a online log of the files that Auslogics defragged
http://auslogics.com...defrag/download
=================================================================================================
Then you can run...
Go to
Start and then to Run
Type in Chkdsk /r Note the space between k and /
Click Enter ...It will probably ask if you want to do this on the next reboot...click Y
If the window doesn't shutdown on its own then reboot the system manually. On reboot the system will start the chkdsk operation
This one will take longer then chkdsk /f

Note... there are 5 stages...
It may appear to hang at a certain percent for a hour or more or even back up and go over the same area...this is normal...
DO NOT SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN WHILE CHKDSK IS RUNNING OR YOU CAN HAVE SEVERE PROBLEMS
This can take several hours to complete.
When completed it will boot the system back into windows.

Let me know if this fixes the problem

123runner

[beethoven]

Sorry for the delay in responding. I've had finals to study for and didn't have the several hours that took for a while. I do like that version of disk defragmenter by the way ...

Problems continue with the wallpaper after all that cleanup, only when system's resources are taxed