A Repair Blog Written By Gurus

Virus Infection “Unable to change desktop background image”

We recently repaired a heav­ily infected com­puter. After clean-up we were unable to change the desk­top back­ground image. Even after clean-up the names of the back­ground images were all grayed out. After a bit of research we came across sev­eral reg­istry keys which were added by a virus.

The first thing we did was to, uncheck “lock web con­tent” in “dis­play properties”.

Then we deleted the fol­low­ing reg­istry keys.…

Click “Start” hit run (can’t see run?), type ” Regedit ” (with­out the quotes) and nav­i­gate to the fol­low­ing entries, and delete them.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\ActiveDesktop\NoHTMLWallPaper = dword:00000001

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\System Wallpaper = “”

Lastly, if all else fails, copy the fol­low­ing text into your notepad and save it as, desktop.reg.

REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ActiveDesktop]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General]
"WallpaperFileTime"=-
"WallpaperLocalFileTime"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"NoDispAppearancePage"=-
"Wallpaper"=-
"WallpaperStyle"=-
"NoDispBackgroundPage"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoActiveDesktopChanges"=-
"ForceActiveDesktopOn"=-
"NoActiveDesktop"=-
"NoSaveSettings"=-
"ClassicShell"=-
"NoThemesTab"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"Wallpaper"=-
"WallpaperStyle"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="0 78 152"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\Run]
"notepad.exe"=-
"notepad2.exe"=-
"winlogon.exe"=-
"paint.exe"=-

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFA}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search]
"SearchAssistant"="http://ie.search.msn.com/{SUB_RFC1766}/srchasst/srchasst.htm"
"CustomizeSearch"="http://ie.search.msn.com/{SUB_RFC1766}/srchasst/srchcust.htm"
"Default_Search_URL"="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=iesearch"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Default_Search_URL"="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=iesearch"
"Search Page"="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=iesearch"

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Search Page"="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=iesearch"
"Search Bar"="Search Bar"="http://search.msn.com/intl/searchpane/en-au/prov2.htm"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl]
""="http://home.microsoft.com/access/autosearch.asp?p=%s"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\main]
"Search Page"="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=ie&ar=iesearch"
"Search Bar"="http://search.msn.com/spbasic.htm"
"Use Custom Search URL"= dword:00000000
"Use Search Asst"=-

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF}]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFA}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFA}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{357A87ED-3E5D-437d-B334-DEB7EB4982A3}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\VMHomepage]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\VMHomepage.1]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{1E1B2878-88FF-11D2-8D96-D7ACAC95951F}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{1E1B286C-88FF-11D2-8D96-D7ACAC95951F}]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VMHomepage]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VMHomepage.1]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objecta]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services\HTTP\Parameters\S]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services\HTTP\Parameters\S]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\r]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\Components\1]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"Intel system tool"=-
"WindowsFZ"=-

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AntivirusGold]

Or down­load it here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Windows XP. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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5 Comments to “Virus Infection “Unable to change desktop background image””

  1. hlndr says:
    May 9, 2008 at 9:38 am

    And this worked? You can now change your desk­top background?

  2. hlndr says:
    May 9, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Here’s my prob­lem. A cou­ple of months ago I down­loaded and installed a pro­gram called Cus­tom Win­dow­blinds by Star­dock. After a cou­ple of weeks I decided that the pro­gram didn’t do what I thought it was going to do and I unin­stalled it (using Add and Remove in my Win­dows XP). Ever since then I have bee unable to change my desk­top back­ground. I can open the Dis­play win­dow and on the Themes tab I can scroll through the themes listed in the lit­tle win­dow and browse my com­puter for themes not listed and themes I have made. I can choose one of those themes and click Apply and the theme will change. All of the col­ors, icons, fonts, skins and sounds asso­ci­ated with the theme I chose will change as they are sup­posed to but my desk­top back­ground will change to a solid color (what­ever color the desk­top is sup­pose to be for that theme. No back­ground pic­ture. When I go to the Back­ground tab I can see the dif­fer­ent back­grounds listed in the lit­tle win­dow but I am unable to scroll through them, high­light them or change them and the Browse but­ton (used to choose a back­ground pic­ture not listed in the lit­tle win­dow) is blanked out mak­ing it unavail­able. Here’s the inter­est­ing part. When I reboot my computer.…as Win­dows is shut­ting down and gets to the stage of shut down where all of your desk­top icons, etc. disappear.….my desk­top back­ground pic­ture will show up. Like it has been there all the time but was hid­den by the plain color one. I have tried so many dif­fer­ent trou­ble shoot­ing steps, scans, clean-ups and searches that I have lost count. I am get­ting ready to for­mat my hard drive and do a com­plete clean rein­stall of Win­dows if another solu­tion doesn’t present itself very soon. Any suggestions?

  3. admin says:
    May 11, 2008 at 9:20 am

    Try typ­ing “gpedit.msc” with­out the quotes into the run box. This will open the “Group Pol­icy Edi­tor”. Under “User Con­fig­u­ra­tion”, expand “Admin­is­tra­tive Tem­plates”, then expand “Desk­top”. All the options should be set to “Not con­fig­ured”. If not, dou­ble click the set­ting to change it to “Not configured”.

    There are also quite a few viruses and spy­ware that could cause these prob­lems. Make sure you have cur­rent virus pro­tec­tion. And run a spy­ware removal pro­gram like Spy­bot Search and Destroy.

    If this did work and your inter­ested in a dif­fer­ent theme, try the “Zune Theme” from Microsoft. Unlike Star­dock and other theme prod­ucts, this theme will not add a process.

  4. Lisa111 says:
    June 21, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    My heros. I’ve been try­ing to change my desk­top pic­ture since last year. I had Macafee and my com­puter still got a virus. Whats a good antivirus to use?

  5. admin says:
    June 23, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    We thought it eas­ier to write a post in response to the last com­ment. It can be seen here.

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