"Active Desktop Recovery" - TFC?

Last night I left my laptop unplugged and left it in Standby mode. No juice this morning. I plugged in and rebooted, had to log-in fresh. Some of my Scheduled Events had been missed. I think my AVG scheduled scan was also missed. As a matter of maintenance, I like to keep my disk free of temp files. So I decided to run first ATF_Cleaner and then TFC. I ran them from G:\mydocs (D: E: and F: already in use by other devices) I think that AVG scan got interrupted too, though I hadn't realized it had started. When I came back from TFC reboot I saw the following, which I've never seen before: [attachment removed: ActiveDesktopRecovery.GIF] What caused this? I know that TFC kills all processes, Explorer windows, and messes with the desktop and some File/Folder options. Is there a way to completely turn off Active Desktop? I don't read Web Pages on my desktop, and I don't plan to anytime soon. I thought I had it turned off (no web pages selected/checked off on the tab it mentions), but apparently that's not enough. System = Windows XP sp3 thank you, Linda

I'm not really sure what causes this problem. This used to be something we saw all the time in older operating systems like Win98.

Now, I rarely see it in XP. I've never seen it in Vista or 7.

Usually, clicking the button "Restore my active desktop" puts it back to normal and you don't see the problem any more.

If you want to force active desktop off, you can do so with group policy. You can go directly to the registry to do so. First, you should make a restore point to make sure you can roll back the changes you make if they cause you problems. After that you can read here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959028.aspx

This registry entry (you need to add it) will disable active desktop and prevent anybody from turning it on as well as remove the "web" tab from desktop settings.

I should point out that I have used this policy in corporate environments to prevent certain desktop modifications. However, I have never done this on a personal computer, and usually I am hunting this policy down and removing it after certain types of malware infections. So, I'm not sure this is a necessary thing to do.