Active Desktop Recovery

Guess I am giving my computer too much stress to cope with. It does give me trouble sometimes but thankfully, they are not so serious and I solve them myself. Recently it shown an error 'Active Desktop Recovery'. Thought these workarounds could be material for a new post. So here we go!!

My computer shows a weird white screen in place of my beautiful desktop image (or company logo in office system). It looks like below in Windows XP.

Clicking on Restore my Active Desktop button doesn't solve the problem (if it does, we are good) but would throw up another window as below.

Clicking Yes or No buttons as above would make the pop up screen disappear but does nothing to the original error. If this is your problem, read further to see how to solve this issue.

What Causes It

Microsoft says that Internet Explorer 7 has been causing some errors with the Active Desktop, if you have Internet Explorer 7 on your computer read this article for the solution to fix the problem. This could also be caused by a corrupted user profile.

Solutions

There are below known solutions to this problem. Try one after another to check your luck.

Solution 1

1. Right click on a blank area of the desktop and select Properties.
2. Select Desktop Tab and press Customize Desktop button. (If you use office laptop, your admin can restrict this view, then try next solution).
3. In General Tab, make a change to the Desktop Icons section by selecting or deselect one of them and press OK.

Your active desktop should be back by now. If it doesn't, try your luck in the next solution.

Solution 2

1. Right click on a blank area of the desktop and select Properties.
2. Select Settings Tab and change Screen resolution. (you can obviously change it back, so no worries)
3. Right click on the desktop and choose Refresh

No luck yet? Go to the next solution.

Solution 3

'Desktop.htt' file controls the size and position of your desktop and the wallpaper you have on it, plus it includes a little activeX control to allow you to reshape it. IE7 is a little bit incompatible with the old profile you may have had already. Since this file is automatically generated by windows, the best fix is to delete the old one[s] and let windows create a new one. 

1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer
2. Select Desktop.htt and delete (it is a hidden file so you will need to change the view first. Click View - Folder Options - View)
3. Close Explorer
4. Right click on the desktop and choose Refresh

Got it now? 

Solution 4: (You should have access to registry editor to try this fix)

1. Go to Run and type regedit in Open and click OK.
2. Now navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components
3. Find a key named DeskHtmlVersion on right side.
4. Right click the key and select Modify
5. Under the label Base, select the radio button Decimal
6. Change Value data from 272 to 0
7. Click OK

This should do the trick. If the error screen doesn't go, then try restarting your PC for the changes to take effect.

Solution 5: (You need to have access to run vbs files)

1. Copy the below text into a notepad 

2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER = &H80000001

   strComputer = "."
   
   

   Set objReg = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")

   strKeyPath = "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components" 

   strValue = "0" 

   ValueName = "DeskHtmlVersion" 

   objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, strKeyPath, ValueName, strValue

3. Save the notepad as activedesktop.vbs 
4. Run the file (if required, as administrator)
5. Logoff and Login again

Solution 6:

Active desktop recovery error may appear because of corrupted user profile. So try creating a new profile.

1. Log on as the Administrator or as a user with administrator credentials.
2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel
3. Click User Accounts
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Advanced
5. In the left pane, click the Users folder
6. On the Action menu, click New User
7. Enter the appropriate user information, and then click Create

When you create a new user profile, you need to copy the existing user profile related files and settings to new profile. Otherwise new profile is just like you are starting a brand new system. So follow these steps to copy your files.

1. Log on as a user other than the user whose profile you are copying files to or from
2. In Windows Explorer, click Tools, click Folder Options, click the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders, click to clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, and then click OK
3. Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\Old_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and Old_Username is the name of the profile you want to copy user data from
4. Press and hold down the CTRL key while you click each file and subfolder in this folder, except the following files:
• Ntuser.dat
• Ntuser.dat.log
• Ntuser.ini
5. On the Edit menu, click Copy
6. Locate the C:\Documents and Settings\New_Username folder, where C is the drive on which Windows XP is installed, and New_Username is the name of the user profile that you created in the "Create a New User Profile" section
7. On the Edit menu, click Paste
8. Log off the computer, and then log on as the new user

Solution 7:

You can try doing a 'repair install' of operating system. You need Windows OS CD.

You reached end of all the solutions. If none of the above did the trick for you, take a deep breathe and call your service provider / IT team / log a ticket. Good Luck!!