Disabled Wallpaper?

[Ross M. Greenberg]

My wife was busy surfing some sites on her machine and got infected with
some spyware and a virus or two. I cleaned up her machine (Trend Micro,
Adaware and MS Antispy) but whatever she infected herself with replaced her
desktop with a "You are infected!" graohic and somehow disabled my ability
to change to something else. I do a right-click|properties|desktop ,but can
not select any replacement wallpaper.

What turned-it-off/disabled it and how do I remable?

Thanks!

Ross

 

[S.Sengupta]

Allow Wallpaper/Background Changes (Line 142)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Martijn Saly]

My wife was busy surfing some sites on her machine and got infected with
some spyware and a virus or two. I cleaned up her machine (Trend Micro,
Adaware and MS Antispy) but whatever she infected herself with replaced her
desktop with a "You are infected!" graohic and somehow disabled my ability
to change to something else. I do a right-click|properties|desktop ,but can
not select any replacement wallpaper.

What turned-it-off/disabled it and how do I remable?

How come you can't select any other wallpaper? I mean, aren't there any
other files to select from? Is the background-tab gone? What does it look
like? Also, you might wanna go to some webpage, find yourself a graphic and
let the browser replace the wallpaper with it. That might fix things.

(on a footnote, consider using Firefox if you don't want malware infections
by just surfing some sites)

 

[Rock]

My wife was busy surfing some sites on her machine and got infected with
some spyware and a virus or two. I cleaned up her machine (Trend Micro,
Adaware and MS Antispy) but whatever she infected herself with replaced her
desktop with a "You are infected!" graohic and somehow disabled my ability
to change to something else. I do a right-click|properties|desktop ,but can
not select any replacement wallpaper.

What turned-it-off/disabled it and how do I remable?

Thanks!

Ross

Right click on a blank area of the Desktop, choose Properties, Desktop
tab, Customize Desktop, Web. Click on the entries shown in the Web
Pages box and click properties to find the name of the file. Then
uncheck / delete all entries in that window. OK out. Lastly search the
drive for that file to see if it's still around and delete it if it is.

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Thanks! Now to try it out.........

Ross

Allow Wallpaper/Background Changes (Line 142)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

The replace wallpaper ability in XP seems disabled.

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Nope. That did not work.......

Thanks! Now to try it out.........

Ross

replaced ,but

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Next try! Thanks! Back in a sec.........

Right click on a blank area of the Desktop, choose Properties, Desktop
tab, Customize Desktop, Web. Click on the entries shown in the Web
Pages box and click properties to find the name of the file. Then
uncheck / delete all entries in that window. OK out. Lastly search the
drive for that file to see if it's still around and delete it if it is.

 

[Paul]

It might be something like this

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.desktophijack.html

You could try this

http://www.simplysup.com/tremover/

Its got 3-4 variants of it in its database. It's
only a trial for 30 days, BUT may remove it.

Next try! Thanks! Back in a sec.........

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Well, I killed all infections, using MS-Antispyware, AdAware, Spybot, and
NOD32, all in safe mode. Sheesh! Still have not been able to change
wallpaper on the desktop: the menu of choices is still disabled.
Right-Click - Properties - Desktop- Cusomize-Web Tab shows nothing. Now
what?

 

[Malke]

Well, I killed all infections, using MS-Antispyware, AdAware, Spybot,
and
NOD32, all in safe mode. Sheesh! Still have not been able to change
wallpaper on the desktop: the menu of choices is still disabled.
Right-Click - Properties - Desktop- Cusomize-Web Tab shows nothing.
Now what?

And you ran MVP Kelly Theriot's fix after all the spyware was gone?
Wallpaper-Desktop-Disable Changing here:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_w.htm

If Display tabs are missing, run Kelly's registry edit on line 285,
right-hand side "Restore all display tabs".

Otherwise, try:

Check to see if these Registry entries exist:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GroupPolicyobject\{21A7BE9D-5027-49C1-B6F7-757B707E1C94}User\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System
If "GroupPolicyRefreshTime" and/or "GroupPolicyRefreshTimeOffset" are
there, then delete them.

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System. If
"GroupPolicyRefreshTime" and/or "GroupPolicyRefreshTimeOffset" are
there, then delete them and then run the reg fix from Kelly's page.

A default wallpaper called wp.bmp may be set in
HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System created by the
smitfraud.c virus. Remove that and you will be able to choose different
wallpapers.

Malke