Problem with Enable Active Desktop policy

[Guest]

Hi

I'm having a problem with the Enable Active Desktop
policy settings.

I am deploying a standard wallpaper to all the PCs on the
network and finding that as soon as I enable the Active
Desktop policy the wallpaper appears but all the desktop
icons have a nasty shadow that is the color of the
desktop background.

As soon as I disable Active Desktop or set it to Not
Configured, this fixes the icon shadow problem but I
loose the wallpaper.

My test environment is a Windows 2000 Server with SP4 and
AD. The group policies are using policy templates form a
Windows XP Pro SP1 system.

I know that using Default profiles on the workstaions is
a workaround, but this limits my ability to change the
wallpaper in the future.

Has anyone hit upon this problem and found a solution.

Cheers

Witek

 

[Buz [MSFT]]

Here is an idea. Go to a client machine and change to Active Desktop
locally. When you do this do you see the shadow? If so this is a local
problem that is probably related to the video drivers on these systems.

Buz Brodin
MCSE NT4 / Win2K
Microsoft Enterprise Domain Support

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[Guest]

Thanks for the suggestion.

After having tried it, enabled active desktop through
gpedit.msc localy, the shadows are still arround the
icons. As soon as I disable active desktop localy, the
shadows disappear.

I would tend to agree with drivers being the issues, but
for the fact that this problem is present on two differnet
types of machines. One is a Compaq Deskpro EN and the
other is a Compaq EVO N1000c. One uses an Intel video card
and the notebook uses ATI.

So it looks like I'm stuck again.

More sugestions please.

Witek

 

[Buz [MSFT]]

1. Have you enabled Active Desktop on a computer (such as your home
computer) and NOT seen these "shadows". Perhaps this is normal behaviour?

If the answer to the above is NO dont bother trying to fix the issue server
side or via group policies. Take one Xp client and tshoot locally. Apply the
fix to all clients.


2. Take out the Active Desktop local policy via gpedit.msc. Log off of the
domain, log into the LOCAL Machine, enable Active Desktop through the User
Interface. Does the issue still occur? If so tshoot at this level.


3. On the local client implement the Cleanboot process outlined at the end
of this post. If the issue still occurs after the clean boot but does not
occur when you log on to the local machine then it is likely another policy
setting or something in a login script somewhere is conflicting with Active
Desktop and causing these shadow thingies.

CLEANBOOT PROCESS:

We want to implement the Cleanboot process using MSCONFIG to rule out 3rd
party software as the cause of this issue. MSCONFIG from XP can also be used
on a Windows 2000 Pro or Server client.

Go to Start\Run type in Msconfig and press OK.
Go to the Startup tab.
Click on "Disable All"
Go to the Services Tab
Click on "Hide all Microsoft Services"
Uncheck the 3rd party services that are left
Press OK twice to reboot.

Once your computer is restarted see if the issue still occurs. If it still
does go to Msconfig and select Enable All on the startup tab and reboot back
to normal mode.
If the issue does not occur go to the Startup tab and select items 4 at a
time or so with reboots in between to narrow down the exact item causing
your problem.

310353 How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310353

Buz Brodin
MCSE NT4 / Win2K
Microsoft Enterprise Domain Support

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newsgroup purposes only."