Active desktop problem

I have just installed windows 98 se on two computers after formatting them both and now every so often when I turn them on, instead of the green default background I get the active desktop even tho I never changed it. Then on the next boot it will be green again?!!?

Any solution to this problem?

Cheers

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The active desktop is always on unless you turn it off. What does the desktop look like when it starts with the active desktop? I'm not using Win98 right now and it's been a while so this may not be exact but when Win98 crashes while the active desktop is turned on you lose your wallpaper and it changes to a white screen with some info on it and a link you can click to turn it back on. Is this the screen you're seeing?

If so, it's possible that one of the apps that loads when windows starts is causing explorer to crash and then when windows finishes loading you see this wallpaper instead of the norm.

You could try turning off any programs that run at startup to see if the problem goes away. The easiest way to do this would be to click start>run and type msconfig. On the startup tab uncheck everything except explorer and systray. If this eliminates the problem, it would become a process of elimination by using msconfig to re-enable a few of the programs at a time until you find the one that's causing it.

Another thing you could do would be to try turning off the active desktop (it may be the problem). If you aren't using a jpeg image for wallpaper and you don't have any web items on the desktop there's really no need to have it running. To turn it off, (my memories a bit sketchy on this) right click on the desktop>active desktop>turn off active desktop. That may not be the correct wording but it should be something like that.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply, I have just reinstalled 98 SE on two computers that have been formatted. Now, I used the default setup and then when it finished installing Win 98 SE and before I installed anything else (like word, printers etc) I turn on the computers to be greeted by the default green background/wallpaper. Now this is fine but when I turn off and on again several times it changes to the Active Desktop randomly.

I will follow your advice and let you know how I get on.

Cheers