Whenever I choose a picture as wallpaper in my WinXP desktop the description has a fixed color background as shown in the screenshot below:


How can I get rid of the green background so that the icon letters lay directly on top of the wallpaper in a transparent fashion? Thanks

Right-click My computer -> Properties -> Advanced (tab) -> Performance, settings -> Scroll down to "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" and make sure it is checked.

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I've experienced this problem in the past. Sometimes a program will cause the effect, but to fix it I would either do what Nitro said or in some cases, restart my computer to fix the issue.

Ive also had this problem sometimes on vista randomly, all i do is end explorer.exe and run it again and its fixed.

Thanks everyone, that worked! See below, regards

Actually, there are more causes than that. Search the forums and you'll find the 3 possible causes and solutions for each cause, as this questions has been asked several times already

eg:
Dodgy White Square
Transparent Icons Help

The information comes from the vast Microsoft's Knowledge Base. When you have a problem in Windows, that should be the first thing you need to search in

Anyways, there are 3 causes for the 'problem':

Cause 1:
You have "Active Desktop" enabled

Fix:
Disable "Active Desktop":
* Uncheck "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" in Control Panel > System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings

Note that Active Desktop can be enabled by other programs and/or situations or stuff you use

Cause 2:
You have enabled "Lock Web Items on Desktop" feature

Fix:
Disable "Lock Web Items on Desktop":
* Right click on your desktop and choose "Arrange Icons", there uncheck "Lock Web Items on Desktop"

Cause 3:
You're using a PNG with a transparancy channel as a background or an animated GIF file.

Fix:
Make sure the background image doesn't have any transparancy channel or isn't an animated GIF. Note that a PNG without any transparant pixels can still have a transparancy channel though and that a GIF file can appear static, but still contain an animation. Use decent graphic programs to check these things.



all the above goes for Windows XP. Similar things might be true for Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305117/

holy crap this question comes up a LOT on these forums...

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Actually, there are more causes than that. Search the forums and you'll find the 3 possible causes and solutions for each cause, as this questions has been asked several times already

eg:
Dodgy White Square
Transparent Icons Help

The information comes from the vast Microsoft's Knowledge Base. When you have a problem in Windows, that should be the first thing you need to search in

Anyways, there are 3 causes for the 'problem':

Cause 1:
You have "Active Desktop" enabled

Fix:
Disable "Active Desktop":
* Uncheck "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" in Control Panel > System Properties > Advanced > Performance > Settings

Note that Active Desktop can be enabled by other programs and/or situations or stuff you use

Cause 2:
You have enabled "Lock Web Items on Desktop" feature

Fix:
Disable "Lock Web Items on Desktop":
* Right click on your desktop and choose "Arrange Icons", there uncheck "Lock Web Items on Desktop"

Cause 3:
You're using a PNG with a transparancy channel as a background or an animated GIF file.

Fix:
Make sure the background image doesn't have any transparancy channel or isn't an animated GIF. Note that a PNG without any transparant pixels can still have a transparancy channel though and that a GIF file can appear static, but still contain an animation. Use decent graphic programs to check these things.



all the above goes for Windows XP. Similar things might be true for Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305117/

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It is though... (hence why I put 'problem' in quotes)

I mean, it is indeed related to how you can customize the Desktop (it's not a problem/issue of Windows, it was designed to do that).

That is what Active Desktop stands for. When you customize how your desktop looks by adding dynamic content or something, the 'Active Desktop' is automatically activated and actually turns your static desktop window with background into an HTML page. Otherwise Windows wont be able to show you the content.

PS: the Knowledge Base isn't just for bug workarounds. In fact, 99% of the KBs consists of HowTo's, from very basic ones to very advanced ones. It is hard to search if you don't know the correct search terms though.