I found this thread through Google, like many of you, and decided to just TRY changing my desktop background to see if it worked. (I tried changing the resolution first and it didn’t fix anything.) Changing the background image did! When I put it back on the image I’d had originally, it went back to the “Active Desktop Recovery” mess. I don’t know if I moved that .jpg file and THAT’S why it freaked out (I don’t remember doing that recently?) but when I browsed to that file’s location and chose it as my background again, it now works just fine.
I wish it’d just say what the problem is in plain language! “I can’t find your desktop image.” Oh well. Hope my input helps someone save a little frustration.
Seems like changing ANYTHING in the user profile causes it to be rewritten, thereby solving the problem.
Changing the Settings –> Resolution is probably the simplest way to do this.
I chose a different approach, based on another article I read.
Using Windows Explorer, I right-clicked on Desktop, went to Properties, selected the tab “Desktop”, clicked the button “Customize desktop”, selected the tab “Web”. There I saw one entry “My Current Home Page”. I selected the checkbox. This caused 80% of my desktop wallpaper to be covered with a blank page (which is my “home page”).
I shut down Windows, turning my machine completely off, then back on again. Went back, turned off the checkbox, turned the machine off again, then back on. Everything seems normal now. We’ll see what happens in 2 days (as someone else above complained about).
Script worked flawlessly, For those who may try, When you run the script it appears nothing happens, but just log out then in again and you’ll be staring at your pretty wallpaper once again.
Changing the background image worked for me too. Didn’t even need to restart. Let’s hope the fix persists.
I first tried the suggestion to change the screen resolution, but that didn’t help me.
I occasionally encounter this Active Desktop Recovery nonsense whenever my system freezes and I need to shut down illegally. On this laptop, the problem seems to happen the most when I plug a device into a USB port that isn’t feeling very friendly. The cursor freezes in place, and I can’t even launch the Windows menu to shut my system down properly.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, and especially for alternatives to a regedit solution.
My problem is the same but my laptop battery is dead. Being unemployed, I can’t solve the problem by buying a new battery. This fix works great…until the next crash, which in my case is several times a day because of the way Dell designed the power cord to fall out if you breathe on it. Consequently, multiple times a day I have to use regedit to change this key value. Is there a way to make that stick or some other way to keep that Active Desktop screen from never showing up again? I’ve been searching forever trying to find a way to do this. I’d glad unintstall IE because I never use it anyway if that was a possibility. But I understand it can’t be unistalled since it’s embedded in the OS?
I already found those fixes and I edited the registry key and it works…thanks! BUT…that’s not exactly what I’m looking for. Every time I crash which can be multiple times a day for the reason I described in my first post, it resets that registry key and I have to go in and do it again. All the fixes I have found work fine if you don’t crash that often but I’m looking for a permanent fix so it doesn’t reset the registry key. I’m wondering if there is a way to totally eliminate that Active Desktop from IE completely. I would uninstall IE if I could because I don’t use it anyway.
For example what would happen if I remove all the Active Desktop references in the registry? I won’t do that without expert advice but there has to be a way to get rid of that so I never have to see it again…lollll
Thanks middo , I ran what u said exactly and self solved my problem. Even my system admin tried to solve it but he is unable to do… thanks for sitepoint.
