desktop background changing to black

[montyphyton]

Hi.
I have the following problem with my vista home premuim. whenever i
change my desktop background to any background, the background stays
there until i turn off my computer. the next time i turn it on, the
background is black again. any ideas? btw, i have dell inspirion 6400.

 

[R. C. White [MVP]]

Hi, Monty.

Where is your "wallpaper" stored? Is it on a network or thumb drive or
other location that might not be available when your computer starts? Maybe
all you need to do is move (or copy) that file onto a location that is
always available to Vista.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail desktop beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[montyphyton]

R. C. White [MVP] je napisao/la:

Hi, Monty.

Where is your "wallpaper" stored? Is it on a network or thumb drive or
other location that might not be available when your computer starts? Maybe
all you need to do is move (or copy) that file onto a location that is
always available to Vista.

all the wallpapers are on my local disk, im using normal backgrounds
that came with vista.

 

[montyphyton]

brink je napisao/la:

Hi Montyphyton,

Not sure, but check this link out to see if it applies to you:

'_http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934008_'
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934008)

i've tried to edit the group policy the see what are my settings but
got an error that windows can't open gpedit.msc file. i've looked in
system32 folder and really, there is no such file there. i do have
gpedit.dll file there. this gpedit.msc seems like a kind of file i
really should have, shouldn't i?

 

[Guest]

I don't think the Home versions (even Premium) of Vista have a policy editor.

This is an odd problem. Was Vista the original OS on this computer? If not,
was it installed as an upgrade?

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

I don't think the Home versions (even Premium) of Vista have a policy editor.

This is an odd problem. Was Vista the original OS on this computer? If not,
was it installed as an upgrade?

:

i've checked it on the net and you're right - vista home editions dont
come with the option for editing group policies. as for my vista, it
came as the original OS on my laptop. i haven't tampered with it, this
stuff was happening from day one...

 

[Guest]

Have you communicated with the vendor of the computer? Sounds like something
is fishy with their original system image. Does everything else seem to be
functioning properly?

I really should get off my duff and do some investigating. I have become
complacent since the advent of Vista, relying solely upon active directory
and the policy editor to achieve whatever I want in the way of control of the
systems I support. But it would be useful to know the registry locations
affected by the policies. One can use a registry reference, or do it the fun
way -- using a tool like RegMon (Mark Russinovich, who now works for
Microsoft) to monitor for registry changes when the policy is applied. If I
get a chance to do play with this today I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, have you considered contacting the notebook vendor or
talking with Microsoft about the hotfix?

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

Have you communicated with the vendor of the computer? Sounds like something
is fishy with their original system image. Does everything else seem to be
functioning properly?

I really should get off my duff and do some investigating. I have become
complacent since the advent of Vista, relying solely upon active directory
and the policy editor to achieve whatever I want in the way of control of the
systems I support. But it would be useful to know the registry locations
affected by the policies. One can use a registry reference, or do it the fun
way -- using a tool like RegMon (Mark Russinovich, who now works for
Microsoft) to monitor for registry changes when the policy is applied. If I
get a chance to do play with this today I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, have you considered contacting the notebook vendor or
talking with Microsoft about the hotfix?

not really because everything else works fine and this isn't some
really big problem. and also, i'm currently in france (bought the
laptop here too) and technical french isn't my strong side. can't
understand a word the lady from dell says on the phone needles to
say her english is worse than my french. anyway, for now i'll live
with it. one thing, though. i've disabled cyberlink power cinema in
startup (the monster ate more than 500 MB of memory). don't really
think that is causing the problem, but maybe it's important to point
that out.

 

[Guest]

Well, I'm glad that the rest of the system is behaving. You're quite right.
If this is all that's wrong, it's not much.

It sounds as though Dell loves to put lots of "extras" on systems there in
France, too. OEM images of Windows are a waste for me. I just don't use 'em.
I immediately scrub them off and put retail or volume license images
(depending on which machine, and where) on all of my systems. I have seen a
lot of crud in the startup configuration of a lot of OEM images, but 500 MB?
Wow! Heh, are they going for a record, or something?

;-)

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

Well, I'm glad that the rest of the system is behaving. You're quite right.
If this is all that's wrong, it's not much.

It sounds as though Dell loves to put lots of "extras" on systems there in
France, too. OEM images of Windows are a waste for me. I just don't use 'em.
I immediately scrub them off and put retail or volume license images
(depending on which machine, and where) on all of my systems. I have seen a
lot of crud in the startup configuration of a lot of OEM images, but 500 MB?
Wow! Heh, are they going for a record, or something?

;-)

well, seems i'm not the only one that had problems with this
powercinema thing:
http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.p...owtopic=141591&pid=1367621&st=0&#entry1367621
http://www.overclock.net/laptops-notebook-computers/190944-those-who-use-dell-laptops-know.html
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=220664&messageID=2222228

 

[Guest]

In and of itself I wouldn't worry about a process that just has a large
memory footprint. Vista seems to have pretty good memory management and will
free memory as it's needed for other processes. But a process that hogs CPU
cycles is another matter. Though the PowerCinema software is mentioned in
those threads you linked, the threads themselves are pretty short on solid
information. I didn't read very carefully, though, because I'm in a bit of a
time bind. Did anyone in those threads discuss a problem with background
colors?

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

In and of itself I wouldn't worry about a process that just has a large
memory footprint. Vista seems to have pretty good memory management and will
free memory as it's needed for other processes. But a process that hogs CPU
cycles is another matter. Though the PowerCinema software is mentioned in
those threads you linked, the threads themselves are pretty short on solid
information. I didn't read very carefully, though, because I'm in a bit of a
time bind. Did anyone in those threads discuss a problem with background
colors?

no, i didn't see anyone there complain about the black background
thing. i sincerly doubt that powercinema has anything to do with it.
but as for the memory management, call me paranoid but i feel a bit
uneasy having a program taking up 500 MB of RAM, no matter how good
the memory management is. beside, having to reallocate that much
memory certainly doesn't improve overall system performance...anyway,
i'm living with it for now.
However, i have another question: how can one make pdf files have the
default adobe acrobat icon? right now, i've associated adobe acrobat
reader with pdf filesm but the icon that is shown is always the first
page of that document. it's really annoying, because most documents
have blank first page, or just a title on the first page so they all
those icons look white and they are really hard to tell apart from
other documents. i would like to turn off this feature that i bet
microsoft (or adobe) is very proud of and have the standard adobe icon
(you know, the red thing). when i look at the properties for the file,
vista tells me that the icon that is shown is that adobe icon. so im a
bit lost here. i've tried looking in adobe reader preferences, but
haven't found anything that could help.

 

[Guest]

Concerning the Windows Explorer icon for Adobe Acrobat PDF files -- When I
cycle the "view" amongst the different choices available (extra large icons,
large icons, medium icons, small icons, list, details, and tiles) the only
ones which show the standard Acrobat PDF icon are small icons, list, and
details. The other views all show me the first page of the document, but
there is a tiny Acrobat (sylized "A") in white on red in the bottom right of
the page icons presented by the other views. Is that what you're seeing? If
so, that's normal. I do remember that the Acrobat icon itself changed
somewhere along the line (transition from version 7 to version 8?) so that it
has a lot more white in it that it had previously.

As regards the memory management and performance -- If a system running
Vista has sufficient RAM I don't think the paging behavior has much
performance affect at all. Windows is constantly working on that page file
and the journal to keep memory ready to accept new active tasks, if needed.
The disk writing for this has already been pretty much finished in the
background by the time a process has finished loading into memory. If the
memory taken by an inactive process is needed for a new active process, or
for a process which is suddenly demaning much more memory, memory containing
that inactive process can be cleared immediately. It causes a lot of concern
by some users who watch their drive activity because Windows seems to be
trashing the hard drive all of the time. In Vista this happens without much
noticeable penalty in user interface responsiveness -- at least if the system
is sufficient for running the OS.

You could probably test this yourself by bringing the system up both with
and without that PowerCinema software running. After the system has been up
for a while I'd be willing to bet that there isn't a lot of difference in the
speed with which the system opens new processes or accomplishes other tasks.
Unless PowerCinema is actually performing some prioritized function.

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

Concerning the Windows Explorer icon for Adobe Acrobat PDF files -- When I
cycle the "view" amongst the different choices available (extra large icons,
large icons, medium icons, small icons, list, details, and tiles) the only
ones which show the standard Acrobat PDF icon are small icons, list, and
details. The other views all show me the first page of the document, but
there is a tiny Acrobat (sylized "A") in white on red in the bottom right of
the page icons presented by the other views. Is that what you're seeing?

In list, details, and small icons view i see only the first page of
the document (without the Acrobat in the lower right corner). btw i'm
normally using details view. when i click on the pdf file, i see the
Acrobat in the lower right corner of the icon that is drawn in the
lower left corner of the window (hope you get what i mean). however, i
would like to change this behaviour - i'd like that the icon i
normally see in details view (currently, this is the first page of the
document) to be just the Acrobat (stylized "A") and nothing else. i
don't want to have to click on the icon to see that it is a pdf or
anything like that. it would be great to have the same thing i had in
win XP. that way, i can visually spot the pdf right away, without
having to look file extensions or anything like that. In short, i'd
like turn off the option of showing the first page as icon...

 

[Guest]

Yeah. What you're reporting doesn't sound normal at all. I tried fiddling
around with Explorer and couldn't get it to do what you're reporting. Just
for grins, what version of Acrobat Reader do you have installed on that
system? Has it had all updates available applied to it?

I would point out that I don't get the stylized white "A" on a red
background as the icon in any case. I don't think you get that icon with
version 8, and, AFAIK, version 8 is the earliest version that is compatible
with Vista. The small icon that I see in small icons / list / details view is
NOT a first page icon, but it does have a white background with the letters
PDF in white on a tiny red banner in the upper left hand corner of the icon
and a larger stylized "A" in red in the main field on the icon's white
background.

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

Yeah. What you're reporting doesn't sound normal at all. I tried fiddling
around with Explorer and couldn't get it to do what you're reporting. Just
for grins, what version of Acrobat Reader do you have installed on that
system? Has it had all updates available applied to it?

I would point out that I don't get the stylized white "A" on a red
background as the icon in any case. I don't think you get that icon with
version 8, and, AFAIK, version 8 is the earliest version that is compatible
with Vista. The small icon that I see in small icons / list / details view is
NOT a first page icon, but it does have a white background with the letters
PDF in white on a tiny red banner in the upper left hand corner of the icon
and a larger stylized "A" in red in the main field on the icon's white
background.

i'm using acrobat reader 8 for vista. i've made two snapshots to
illustrate the problem. if you' like to see them tell me and i'll try
to put them somewhere online...

 

[Guest]

I don't think it's necessary for me to see screen shots. I think I have a
pretty good iea from your description of what you're seeing. I just don't
understand how it's happening. I wonder if Adobe technical support could tell
you why this is happening? If many people are having this experience they
must be communicating with Adobe about it.

You don't see anything similar to this behavior with the icons of files
associated with other applications, do you? I have checked the associated
file icons of some other applications, like Visio, that show the first page
of a document in some of the views, but on my Vista systems all of those
others are behaving properly, too.

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

I don't think it's necessary for me to see screen shots. I think I have a
pretty good iea from your description of what you're seeing. I just don't
understand how it's happening. I wonder if Adobe technical support could tell
you why this is happening? If many people are having this experience they
must be communicating with Adobe about it.

You don't see anything similar to this behavior with the icons of files
associated with other applications, do you? I have checked the associated
file icons of some other applications, like Visio, that show the first page
of a document in some of the views, but on my Vista systems all of those
others are behaving properly, too.

i'm kinda tired from all this so i'll just leave it be... one thing
that i'd like to try, but don't know how is simply change the icon. in
xp, IIRC it was in file types where you could choose what program
opens which file, and you could also choose the icon. in vista i've
found how to change the program, but i don't know how to change the
icon. btw, here is how it looks like now:
http://pyfuck.cvs.sourceforge.net/pyfuck/noicon.PNG?revision=1.1&view=markup
and here is what is shown in the lower left part of the window:
http://pyfuck.cvs.sourceforge.net/pyfuck/icon.PNG?revision=1.1&view=markup

anyway, thanks for all your help. if you can tell me how to change the
icon, that would be great, if not, no big deal, i'll live with it.

 

[Guest]

Yeah, that looks exactly the way you described it, and the way I imagined it.
I'm sorry to say that I don't have a clue as to how to fix it, though. At
this point I would try uninstalling Acrobat Reader and reinstalling it -- if
you haven't done that already. If Acrobat Reader's associated icons are the
only ones on the system that are misbehaving, I'm guessing something may have
gone awry with the original installation. A reinstallation and / or calling
Adobe tech support are the only options I can think of that make much sense
right now.

 

[montyphyton]

jimmuh je napisao/la:

Yeah, that looks exactly the way you described it, and the way I imagined it.
I'm sorry to say that I don't have a clue as to how to fix it, though. At
this point I would try uninstalling Acrobat Reader and reinstalling it -- if
you haven't done that already. If Acrobat Reader's associated icons are the
only ones on the system that are misbehaving, I'm guessing something may have
gone awry with the original installation. A reinstallation and / or calling
Adobe tech support are the only options I can think of that make much sense
right now.

well, reinstalling acrobat reader was the first thing i did (how to
fix a car? get out of it and get back in ) but it didn't work.
first i'll try tinkering with acrobat reader preferences and if
nothing works i'll contact the support. thanks for all your help mate!