[milehighguy]

Greetings,

This is not a malware issue - I've been to malware forums and my computer scans clean with a multitude of malware-detection services. I believe it's a registry/permissions/policies settings issue at this point.

I recently cleaned out some viruses and Trojans from my Windows 2000 machine, and now find my desktop wallpaper locked up. Certain other changes have taken place as well - such as the removal of my PopUpCop IE toolbar button, and toolbar lockup - upon reinstall of PopUpCop, I'm not allowed to have it add its toolbar button to my IE browser.

When I right-click on the desktop to Active Desktop/Customize My Desktop/Display Properties/Background, all image file choices are grayed out, and the wallpaper is locked to the last choice - an IE icon with the word "desktop". I've heard about "desktop.html" and did in fact find the registry setting:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System Wallpaper REG_SZ C:\WINDOWS\desktop.html

... but there is no such file "desktop.html" on my machine.

By the way - replacing "desktop.html" with an image file in the above registry line causes the image file to appear during boot-up - but it disappears when the icons appear on the desktop.

I've also become familiar with registry settings such as NoChangingWallpaper. It seems to be in normal (not disabled) setting:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop\NoChangingWallpaper = 0

What I'm totally unfamiliar with is how to set W2K "permission" and "policy" settings. I know some companies like to have their workstation monitors display their company logo, so they lock out their employees' access to wallpaper customization. I wonder if that's what's happened to my settings?

So I'm wondering how to recover the original settings/operation of the desktop wallpaper and IE Toolbar customization options?

Note: Prior to all this happening, I created a set of W2K boot-up floppies, and I have the original W2K CD. I tried booting up from the floppies but they seem to want to do a re-install and not a boot-up, so I did not proceed.

Thanks for any help!

Milehighguy

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All the folks viewing this thread will enjoy hearing I fixed this problem. Hope it's of help to others.



Did some research at:

http://www.microsoft...entry/93252.asp

and:

http://www.microsoft...entry/93214.asp

What I ended up doing was deleting the registry entries for:

HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Policies/...

Active Desktop/NoChangingWallpaper ("If the value is 0 (or not in the registry) the policy is disabled or not configured. Options on the Background tab are enabled." Since the value was 0, yet options in the Background tab were NOT enabled - I opted to delete the entry altogether.

and

System/Wallpaper ("If this entry does not appear in the registry, no wallpaper is displayed by default, but users can select the wallpaper of their choice.")

Voila. Full control restored.

[milehighguy]

All the folks viewing this thread will enjoy hearing I fixed this problem. Hope it's of help to others.



Did some research at:

http://www.microsoft...entry/93252.asp

and:

http://www.microsoft...entry/93214.asp

What I ended up doing was deleting the registry entries for:

HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Policies/...

Active Desktop/NoChangingWallpaper ("If the value is 0 (or not in the registry) the policy is disabled or not configured. Options on the Background tab are enabled." Since the value was 0, yet options in the Background tab were NOT enabled - I opted to delete the entry altogether.

and

System/Wallpaper ("If this entry does not appear in the registry, no wallpaper is displayed by default, but users can select the wallpaper of their choice.")

Voila. Full control restored.