Weird desktop problem

entropy

I noticed this the other day. I haven't changed a thing, but it sort of did it itself. I looked around in the Desktop and then Advanced tab, but I couldn't find anything. Frankly, I've never seen this, and I wouldn't know what it would be called. Any suggestions?

In case you don't get what I'm talking about, see the black background on the text, and the crappy "shadow" of the icons? That's what. I included a few different file types to show it's standard, but only on the desktop. Nowhere else does this happen.

shwaip

control panel - system - advanced - performance

make sure use drop shadows is checked

entropy

It's ticked.

It's almost more like Windows is forgetting that it needs to remove the black from behind the text.

Rewired

I've seen this on systems before. It makes for a very unattractive desktop. I'd be very interested to hear the fix. From what I understand, Win2K desktop icons always have a fill color and this was changed with the introduction of Win XP. At the very least you can probably change the fill color by changing your background color.

entropy

Nope, didn't work. I changed my background to one with all greys and it still had the black background in the text

Gobbles

The shadows behind the icons and the black around the text are 2 different things.

for the shadows.. try disabling desktop icons then reenabling them...


for the icon color... try

entropy

Huh! Good work! The second option worked - it changed both the background behind the text AND the shadows. I didn't bother trying that because I thought it meant what color should it be if there's no picture on the background. Thanks.

Now I just have to get it to be clear, instead of a color... it's almost like, in those spots, it isn't "seeing" the background image.

Gobbles

I think if you use the other option and set the color to 256 256 256 for the rgb its clear. I think...


EDIT... nope nm

Gobbles

to make the icon text back ground color disappear... go back and set the drop shadow thing to on and it goes transparent.

entropy

The one shwaip pointed out? Because I went, unchecked it, hit apply then ok, then went back and checked, hit apply then ok, and it didn't change anything.

Enverex

Gobbles wrote:

to make the icon text back ground color disappear... go back and set the drop shadow thing to on and it goes transparent.

entropy wrote:

It's ticked.

It's almost more like Windows is forgetting that it needs to remove the black from behind the text.

Try turning it off, oking all the windows then going back through and turning it back on again...

EDIT: Bah, damn too slow.

shwaip

try disabling active desktop, either through the normal method (not that I actually know how to do that) or through this registry tweak

http://winguides.com/registry/display.php/508/

entropy

Thank you very much. That did it. What does active desktop actually mean, that you can't drop those pictures or whatever on there? I vaguely remember something like that. No matter, I don't need to. Everything works fine. Thanks again

Gobbles

entropy wrote:

The one shwaip pointed out? Because I went, unchecked it, hit apply then ok, then went back and checked, hit apply then ok, and it didn't change anything.

Yeah... I did it and it maid the background transparent.

shwaip

I think active desktop let you use a web page as your background. Among other features, that's what I messed around with for a while.

Rewired

Is there a way to disable the active desktop without editing the registry? Is this an issue in Win2K?

Rewired

I turned on active desktop by checking one of the webpages in the Cutimize Desktop window just to try it out for myself and now I can't get rid of the fill colors behind the text of the icons. I created the registry key as it says in the guide above. This got rid of the active desktop tab but the fill color is still there. :shakehead

Oh well.