[Petrarch of the VBB]

Any ideas on how to fix it?

[pyro-manic]

Ummm....

What am I looking at here? And what's the problem?

[Kie99]

What's the difference

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Look at the text labels on the icons...

[Fury]

Is that W98 or ME? If yes, then you need to enable active desktop or get an utility from a web that enables the feature. Google for it.

[kasperl]

Right click on the desktop, go to properties. Go to do 'desktop' , and then 'adapt desktop' or something like that.
Fiddle around with the colour stuff once you get there. You're looking at something like "text background" and a transparent option.
Mind you, I'm typing this while looking at a Dutch version of XP, so the terms and exact spots can be somewhat off.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Is that W98 or ME? If yes, then you need to enable active desktop or get an utility from a web that enables the feature. Google for it.

It's XP.

If it was either 98 or ME I'd know about such a utility, otherwise I wouldn't've had the transparent labels beforehand, comprendi?

[Petrarch of the VBB]

There's another symptom.
The themes tab has disappeared from the Display Properties window, which probably means I've somehow disabled themes.
Since I've only recently moved onto XP I wouldn't know how to re-enable them. Suggestions?

[Fury]

Go to control panel > administrative tools > services > double click on themes > make sure its set to automatic and is running > close services.

Then go to control panel > system > advanced > performance settings > enable drop shadows for icon labels on desktop > ok > ok.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Done both of them, to no effect.

But it's a moot point now, as I fixed the problems with a combination of system restore and manually editing the registry.

[karajorma]

EDIT : Mr Fury beat me to it