transparant windows xp icons HELP tried (almost) everything

[googlenews2004]

I can't get the desktop icon text to show against the desktop only,
without the colored box around it. I have surfed and read and surfed
and read. I have:

* checked the use drop shadows box (system properties performance
settings)
* unchecked all active desktop web pages in desktop items inside
display properties (deleted all but the default, and unchecked that
one).
* unchecked lock desktop items on the same dialoge box as I describe
above
* unchecked lock web items on desktop under 'arrange icons by' (right
click empty desktop)
* performed spyware and virus checks (ad_aware, spybot s&d, norton)
* cleared any fishy entries with hijackthis
* downloaded third party software: Iconoid insists that this computer
is currently using activedesktop, so I:
* downloaded and ran mvp kellys corner toggle active desktop vsb
script. toggled active desktop to disabled
* restarted and restarted and restarted computer with different
settings
* downloaded and ran mvp kelly's wallpaper changes enabled script
* removed all icons from the desktop in case one happened to be an
activedesktop icon. Currently only have 4 system icons on desktop as
checked off in customize desktop area.

Unusual things that happen:

-- iconoid always thinks activedesktop is always on no matter what I do
--on restart, if I run the kelly's corner script to disable active
desktop, it will toggle it to disabled even though i thought it was
ALREADY disabled.
AND
--If I switch users to my very rarely used guest log in, THAT desktop
has no problem making the icon's textbox invisible, darnit.

I am somewhat technically minded, and read many posts on this subject,
so if you're reading my plea for help and notice that I seemed to have
incorrectly performed something I mentioned, I may have mistyped the
steps I followed (this sentence is my attempt to reduce the number of
responses that repeat the often repeated check this and that
instructions).

Many posts I read repeated 4 circumstances that had to be satisfied in
order for the icons to be transparent; I have met the 4 as far as I can
tell.

I have tried to find out what programs may be working under my radar
but I can't seem to find anything that would interfere. I suspect there
is some active desktop foul up but I (obviously) can't resolve it.

Thanks for your help, I've been doing this for hours!

Please respond in the newsgroup!

 

[Lee Chung Pak]

you could try to revert to default themes from the display properties and go
to apperance and set to windows xp style, choose another color scheme. go
desktop, click customize desktop, go to web tab, check if you any tick in
the web pages, example My Current Home Page.

click Ok to close and apply all changes. if not, you might wanna registry
modifications

 

[gn]

Thanks for your response -- good idea but I eventually solved the
problem. I downloaded a specific spyware/adware cleanup program, shut
down, restarted in safe mode (using f8) and ran the software. When I
rebooted into normal mode the icon text boxes went transparent. I'm not
sure if I fixed something and then going in to safe mode triggered it,
or if using the spyware stuff cleaned it up??!

For others who come after me and have a similar problem, I went to
http://noahdfear.geekstogo.com and followed the instructions for
downloading and running SmitRem by noahdfear. Before I did this I ran
all kinds of restoring fixes and tweaks from kelly's corner....