Computer Help

[Pelham Boy]

I hope this makes sense!
A couple of weeks ago i had some computer problems,which are now sorted and everything works fine.
However when i fire up the computer the background is plain white with a message headed 'Active desktop recovery'.
It tells me to right click on the desktop,click properties then the desktop tab,and then choose the background i want.
But when i right click the desktop i get a message saying 'your system administrator has disabled the display control panel'.
Any help how i can fix this would be much appreciated.

You aren't logged on as the administrator, the primary account.
If it's a work computer you need to see the IT guy if it's a home PC then you should have another account to log into to change the setting.

Its a home computer. I dont understand when you say i should have another account to log  into.

There are 2 types of account in xp, administrator and user.
Admin has access to all the settings but user accounts can be limited to stop them mucking around too much.
Yours appears to be a user account, if so there is an admin account setup that you need to log into.
When you turn the puter on do you get a screen that asks which account you want?
i.e. Dave, Sally, etc.?

No i dont think so. It just says my name.

[henrik777]

Restart the pc. Presss and hold f8 until you get the screen with some choices on it and load up in safe mode. User name "administrator" and no password. Go into control panel and make the required changes.

Sandy

[Bongo]

The easiest way to find if you're administrator or not would be to check the User Accounts settings in the control panel, see what it says next to your name.

[Pelham Boy]

The easiest way to find if you're administrator or not would be to check the User Accounts settings in the control panel, see what it says next to your name.

It says that i am the administrator.

[Pelham Boy]

Thinking back,i cleared the cache and other things when i had the problems. would this have affected it? Do i have to re set the password?

[Ecosse]

A friend had the exact same problem a couple of weeks ago. It's a virus that has been doing the rounds and has changed registry settings.

Look here for a similar virus analysis from the sophos website :-

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/trojfavaddc.html#table4

Find out the name of the virus you had or run spybot-sd to see if it will pick up the registry changes.

Other method is to create a new user account and login with it but then you lose all your desktop settings, my document locations (these all need reset). Even then it may have infected the registry globally (all users subkey)