Active Desktop Recovery

Hi,

I occasionally encounter the following problem with some of the comuters that I deal with while removing malware. They have the "Active Desktop Recovery" as their desktop, and none of the conventional remidies work (turn off Active desktop, it's not on; reg hacks that are common; etc). This is after performing the malware removal.

Is it not Almod that causes this? Do you know how to fix it? I can't even find the Desktop.htt file on the HDD.

And help would be apreciated.

 

Do you have viewing of hidden and system files enabled? The Desktop.htt file is hidden.

** Yes, I've done the search looking for hidden and system files. Still nothing.

For Windows XP it is normally located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

*** yup, looked there as well. Nothing. Not on any profiles, even the default ones.

It will be in a different location for some other Window's OS's


What OS do you have?

***Always XP, various service packs.


Does it happen on ALL user profiles?

*** Yuppers.

This is more than likely not a malware related problem!

*** Or a leftover of a desktop hijacker.

---

I've done the registry hacks for turning off the Active Desktop, looked for the Desktop.htt, even tried doing the "repair" thingy itself. Nothing seems to work.

Anything else I can try in the future?

 

I'll look at doing your suggested steps the next time I come across this issue and let you know the outcome.