Desktop Appearance changed

I'm not sure is this is the right area to post this question but I am sure you will let me know.

Anywho, when I booted my computer up this afternoon the silver desktop appearance color scheme for windowsxp that has been there for a long time changed back to the bright blue default. I did nothing to make these changes.

I did a system restore back to last saturday and the silver desktop is back as it was.

The only updates I am aware of is the Avast! updates that happen every morning and afternoon.

I ran Malwarebytes and it came up clean. If you want me to run the rest of the Read Me and Run First then I will do that. I am posting this first to see if this is just a quirk of Windows XP.

Also, another thing that happened was there was also an update available for Adobe Flash Player. I downloaded it and when I was ready to install it I got an error message that said I did not have permissions to open files in that folder and I should change the permissions to be able to open the file. Never saw that before. Anyway, any help with this issue is much appreciated.

 

Those two things together tend to point to a corrupt profile. A temporary profile is loaded that has the default wallpaper and it has limited permissions. Your system restore may have been able to remedy the situation.

You might want to check C:\Documents and Settings to see if there is a folder with your username and some extra character such as Trisha1. If it exists then it probably was a profile problem.

 

Thanks sach2. I don't see any new folders.

 

I'm not sure what happened then. I've been thinking about user profile problems today and maybe I jumped to conclusions. I'm fairly sure if you were logged into a temporary profile there would be some remnant in Docs and Settings to prove it. (Unless System Restore removed it?)

You might want to do a chkdsk just to be sure you don't have any obvious problem with your file system. My Computer>right-click C: drive and select Properties. Under Tools tab Error Checking and Check Now button. Leave the first box ticked and hit the Start button. It will ask to schedule for next boot so say OK. Reboot when you have a chance, the check only takes a few minutes with only the first box ticked. Doesn't matter if it finds any errors as it will fix them, you are just running it as a maintenance measure.

Let's see if any one else has another idea as to what could have happened.

 

My experience is related to part of your problem and is presented as an avenue to explore...

I had a similar problem a few months ago, it presented with an attempt to download Adobe Flash updates but the symptom was the same for any download. I am set up so Firefox downloads to my desktop. Out of nowhere, I was told I didn't have permissions for that folder (desktop) and advised to change them. My permissions were fine however, and I could download to other locations.

I have Unlocker installed on my machine.

I went into C:>Users> and right clicked my profile and selected What is Locking this Folder. For some reason uTorrent was locking my desktop and stopping me from downloading to it or installing from it. Unlocked it and bingo, problem solved.

C:\Documents and Settings is where you'll find your profile in XP. With Unlocker installed, check if anything is locking the profile and unlock it. Do the same inside for the Desktop folder.