Wallpaper headaches

Hopefully this is just a setting problem but I've googled myself out and can't find an answer.

I'm running XP professional and my desktop wallpaper has always been one of a set of family photos, I change it every few months or so and it has never been a problem.

Over the past few weeks it has started playing up, sometimes the image would appear exactly as I wanted on startup and stay that way, other days I would start up the PC and the image would appear zoomed in so only a quarter was visible and had stretched to fill the screen, the next day it would be fine again.

It was annoying but because it corrected itself I ignored it, this morning I went to change the image and only the top left 1/16th of the image is visible massively blown up. Tried changing to one of the supplied images and got the same enlarged partial picture filling the screen with each one.

More worrying, I checked the other user login and found that was fine so I went to User Settings in Control Panel and when I clicked it the User Settings window opened massively bigger than it should be (all other windows & files including task bar etc display fine). Not sure if this is relevant but on start up the desktop flashes up as it should then disappears and the background colour replaces it for a few seconds while the taskbar loads, then the image comes back and that is when it messes up. I've rebooted the thing over a dozen times after various fix attempts and its flashed up fine at first on each occasion but only before the taskbar loads.

In the end I decided I must have mucked something up so I tried a system restore and even though I went back over a month it wouldn't run on any date.

I run Zone Alarm firewall and AVG8 so I set AVG scanning and it found nothing more than a few tracking cookies.

To be honest I've run out of ideas, I wondered if it could be a software conflict somewhere, but I've not installed anything new in a while and it worked fine before.

Any clues???

 

Sounds like you may have inadvertently switched on the accessibility options (in control panel), if I remember correctly I think it is used for people with sight or other impairments (hence the huge screen)
I am not sure how to shut it off (I do not run a windows box)

This is a system notification that the accessibility options have been engaged(you can also have an audible beep)

I hope that points you in the right direction

Petaluma

 

Had a look at accessibility options after reading your post but all the settings appear to be switched off.

However you are a genius anyway as you gave me the clue I needed (looking too deep for waaay too long).

Just in case anyone else gets this issue I run Chrome as my main browser but keep IE8 for certain pages that won't play with Google or FF.

Yesterday I got a blogpost in my feed reader with an small embedded image someone wanted to identify. You can zoom text in my feed reader and Chrome (I have crap eyesight) but not images so I stuck the URL into IE8 and zoomed to 400%, couldn't figure out where the picture was taken and shut IE8 and of course I haven't opened it since so I didn't realise it had retained that zoom and Windows had weirdly decided to apply it to my wallpaper and user settings folder (but nothing else).

MS - way to go with the joined up thinking!!!!
Petaluma - Thanks for the prompt response and rescue of my sanity (would you believe I've been on this since about 9am on and off and its now half past midnight!)