Restore Active Desktop

[neilmc]

Hi, Having a problem with a staff laptop, he keeps getting the Active Desktop Recovery, I have rebuilt the laptop, I have deleted his profile, and now have no idea what do to. only thing I thing of doing is giving him a total new Account again, this has happened twice now.

 

Anyone got any ideas how I could fix this?

 

Cheers

[Michael]

I had this the other week. Simply right click the desktop and select a new wallpaper. The interesting thing (in my case) was the machine was running XP SP3 with IE7 installed, so Active Desktop technically shouldn't work anymore.

[Richie]

Heres another way of fixing this issue:

 

Find the following registry entry:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components

 

And change the DesktopHtmlVersion value to 0

 

Then just right click your desktop and click refresh. The registry value will be reset back to it's default setting of 272 (decimal) so if Active Desktop Recovery comes back up in the future you have to repeat the process.

 

 

Alternatively, the registry value can be push out via Group Policy if this is something get often or on lots of computers. This will make the fix permanent saving you the trouble of having to sift through registries all the time.

[ICT_GUY]

I have a script that fixes that.

 

actually is a reg file, works with students credentials too.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components]
"DeskHtmlVersion"=dword:000000
"DeskHtmlMinorVersion"=dword:00000005
"Settings"=dword:00000001

Edited February 25, 2010 by ICT_GUY

[Ben-UK]

Hello,

 

I am trying to fix the active desktop problem at the moment and not having much luck.

 

Running WinXP SP3 with IE7.

 

Just happening to student accounts, they log on and get the "Message Internet Explorer cannot find the Active Desktop HTML file" and the white bar down the left hand side.

 

Not having much luck with the reg key and reg script posted above.

 

The path in the .reg points to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components, this does not seem to exisit i can only browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\Components (no desktop folder)

 

Anyone help me please

 

Thanks Ben

[ICT_GUY]

The reg script works like a dream, you will have to refresh the desktop after running the script.

[Ben-UK]

Hello,

 

Thanks for the reply ICT_GUY

 

Ok may be its me doing something wrong then.

 

I am saving the below code into notepad then saving it as activedesktop.reg ??? thats correct right ?

 

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components]

"DeskHtmlVersion"=dword:000000

"DeskHtmlMinorVersion"=dword:00000005

"Settings"=dword:00000001

 

 

With the affected user logged on i run the .reg file and get error the along the lines of "this is not a registry script"

 

Thanks for the help.

[themightymrp]

You need to put this line at the top of the file:

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

Otherwise it won't work

[burgemaster]

I managed to get the reg file to import for the staff member, but after an F5 of the desktop still nothing....

 

In the end I copied "Desktop HiJack Fix" to our application share and this fixed it straight away

Desktop Hijack Fix - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

[detjo]

I had this happening on staff laptops and every 2 weeks or so it kept coming back.

In the end I put the mentioned reg hack in the logon script for laptops so it gets reset every time they log in.

Hasnt happened since (not to my knowledge, anyway)

 

Not sure if i got the script from here or elsewhere on the www.

 

If UCase(Left(sComputerName, 3)) = "LAP" Then
  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
End If

[witch]

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I have a very similar problem - BUT it only applies to one member of staff, AND it applies to ANY machine she logs on to. I deleted the profile but that hasnt helped. I can't see how applying something to the individual machine would help so is my only option putting the above in the login script?

[mwbutler]

We have this issue on Netbooks and no reg fixes solved the problem, however this seems to fix the issue :

 

- Login as Admin

- Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\

- Change StudentUser profile to C:\Documents and Settings\StudentUser-OLD\

- Login as StudentUser (make temp admin of netbook) to re-create the profile

- Set appropriate wallpaper

- Lockdown Netbook via our scripts and change studentuser back to limited user

[witch]

We have this issue on Netbooks and no reg fixes solved the problem, however this seems to fix the issue :

 

- Login as Admin

- Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\

- Change StudentUser profile to C:\Documents and Settings\StudentUser-OLD\

- Login as StudentUser (make temp admin of netbook) to re-create the profile

- Set appropriate wallpaper

- Lockdown Netbook via our scripts and change studentuser back to limited user

Doesnt work for me and I dont understand what is going on? It must be to do with her profile surely?

[mwbutler]

Doesnt work for me and I dont understand what is going on? It must be to do with her profile surely?

 

Yep it was a profile issue for us which is why you rename their current profile to something else which will force the account to create a new profile when they next login. If I was in your position I would backup her profile on the server and delete it, create a new one (copy any favourites etc back over), go to a PC which doesn't have her profile on it and see what happens. If you still get the active desktop error, see if simply changing the wallpaper fixes the issue.

[witch]

Did that first - deleted both XP and Win 7 profile and allowed them to recreate. Cannot change wallpaper the usual way

[Steve21]

Did that first - deleted both XP and Win 7 profile and allowed them to recreate. Cannot change wallpaper the usual way

 

Have you tried clearing their app data, The normal desktop.htt is hidden away in there I thought? Not in the main user part.

 

(Silly question too, but Win7? or XP?)

 

Steve