Active Desktop Issue

[carolinaadi]

My wife was on our computer yesterday and somehow pressed a button that she
does not remember that has made all of the background text under each icon on
our desktop turn black.

Has she actived/deactived something in XP?

 

[Bob I]

The text color is determined by the background color, Light colors will
have black, dark colors will have white, it's automatic.

 

[carolinaadi]

Bob,
Thanks for the email. I get that. However, it just randomly made the
change. It wasn't as if she manually changed it on purpose.

thoughts?

 

[Malke]

Bob,
Thanks for the email. I get that. However, it just randomly made the
change. It wasn't as if she manually changed it on purpose.

Are you talking about no longer having transparency behind the icon text?

Open the System applet in Control Panel, choose the Advanced tab, and click
Settings in the Performance section. Turn on the "Use drop shadows for icon
labels on the desktop option", and click Ok.

Four things are required for transparent icon backgrounds:

1) System Properties>Advanced>Performance Settings>VisualEffects - check
"use drop shadows for icon labels".
2) Right-click on Desktop ->Arrange Icons by>Lock Web items must be cleared.
3) If you have any web content on your desktop, transparency won't work. To
check for web content: Display Properties>Desktop>Customize Desktop>Web -
make sure all checkboxes are clear.
4) Wallpaper must be an image file, not html.

Obviously I can't guess what your wife did, but see if doing the above fixes
the issue.

Malke