Background Won't Change

A lady I work with came to me with a problem she is having.
She is running a HP with Windows XP.
She had as her background a picture she had stored in her My Pictures folder.
She wanted to change it, so went to the folder and the things on the left hand side are gone. (The part that shows what tasks she can do.) Hope that makes sense.

Also, she has tried right clicking on desktop and went to Properties to try to change it.
What happened then, is it placed the new background on top of the other picture, but it is still there.

Any ideas what is going on or how she can get rid of the old picture?

Hope I have enough info here for it to make sense.

 

Sounds like she has an active desktop picture as her background originally, then she used the desktop properties to add an additional background.

To remove the original active desktop object:

As for the left hand details panel, I don't have xp here at home to give you more details, but I want to say it is located on the view menu.

I'm sure someone here could give a better answer on that one.

 

The right pane I believe is called the explorer bar.
Try clicking the View menu, and selecting "show explorer bar."