Desktop Icon Text Background problem

Hey..yet another guy who registered JUST to help ya out boss. My machine did this to me TONIGHT. It's taken me three hours to fix it. Here is the simple set of clicks that did it. Turn off the drop shadowing like everyone said. THEN…right click on your desktop and turn off all the icons by unchecking the "show desktop icons" feature under "arrange Icons by…." Wait for your machine to turn them off. Turn the icons back ON. Mine came back fixed. It doesn't seem to matter now what I do with the drop shadow feature…on or off makes no diff but I'm back to transparent icon labels….so I'm not touching it again. LOL NOTE: I have also got all the active desktop junk deleted per that earlier post. Hope this helps. I'll try to check back to see how you did. NOt sure if emails are allowed here but you can always email me at Jserpico22(AT)yahoo.com if you wanna chat about it further. Good luck amigo….I hope this ends up helping you out.

So far, none of these have worked yet I am glad that a lot of people are registering just to help me though, lol

As a poster earlier suggested, the "Lock desktop items" is the key.
Doesn't matter if you have "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" checked or not, icon text still has a solid-color backdrop.
Try enabling the option (Start -> Run -> desk.cpl -> Desktop -> Customize Desktop -> Web -> Lock desktop items), hit OK, then Apply. After that follow the same procedure to disable it. Worked fine for me.

Some screenshots follow.
Before:
[external image: Posted Image]

After:

[external image: Posted Image]

Hope this helps.

yes, I have tried that many times before I posted this thread and more times after I did thanks for the suggestion anyways though

Hey.. Try this… Right Click MY COMPUTER - > PROPERTIES - > ADVANCED TAB - > Under PERFORMANCE , Click on Settings - > Click on Adjust for Best Appearence . That should do it.. i guess… Plz revert in case that works.

Or you can even try the good ol… system restore…. !!!…

A fix at the bottom…

I have exactly the same problem..

it occurred after I fixed another problem (icons on cd and dvd drives all being ie7 icons)

I had to switch to 16 bit, and then back to 32 bit..

after that my icon shadows were bugged..

tried all the stuff.. but it seems something is bugged with the way windows stores the settings..

anyway…

I then tried downloading Cronosoft XP visual tools
http://www.cronosoft.com/download/xp_visual_tools/index.htm

and when I set the desktop backdrop using that tool, it works, if I then set it with the normal display applet, its bugged again..

I think the display applet if foo-bar'ed.. dont know how to fix it..

so.. but the tool above works.

I found a fix… in a commandprompt.. regsvr32 shdocvw.dll regsvr32 shimgvw.dll after I did that it all works again

none of those work yet >_>

did you by any chance try, changing setting the bitdepth to 16, apply, then back to 32 and apply?

no, how do I do that

in the display panel (rightclick desktop->properties) in the last pane you can set resolution, and color depth..

does not work >_<

Alright Nimsha, I saw this thread and felt your pain. So I signed up to see if I could help. (I think that makes me the third =P ) Go into regedit. (Backup your registry of course) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\ Update these values: "NoActiveDesktop" to "1" "ForceActiveDesktopOn" to "0" Exit regedit. Use task manager to restart explorer.exe or just reboot. Either way, this should take care of your problem. Coup =) P.S. Make sure the other settings are in place as well. You may have left shadows off after all the troubleshooting.

How do I restart explorer?