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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
October 5,
2008
Q.
When I right click the desktop and choose
Properties, the Desktop and Screensaver tabs
have disappeared from the little window that
opens. How do I get them back?
A.
It appears that you have been infected with
malware, particularly one like "XP Antivirus
2009" or a strain of it.
XPAntivirus 2009, also known as XP Antivirus
2009, XPAntivirus2009 XP or XP Antivirus
Protection, is a rogue anti-virus program
that displays a fake icon on your system
tray stating that your computer is infected
with spyware. XPAntivirus 2009 will use fake
security messages to urge you to download
their software and will prompt you into
purchasing the full version of XPAntivirus
2009 to remove the trash that they put there
or that doesn't actually exist.
XPAntivirus 2009 is part of the same family
of rogue anti-spyware programs as Antivirus
2008, Antivirus 2009, Windows Antivirus
2008, Vista Antivirus 2008 and Ultimate
Antivirus 2008. These are usually
promoted
via a ZLOB/MediaAccess Codec installer found
on games, "Social Network", adult and many
other websites.
When
these malware programs get in the computer,
they constantly pop up warnings that get
progressive worse until the computer becomes
useless. They may display wallpaper that
looks like the normal desktop. To make it
difficult to change the wallpaper, they hide
the Desktop and Screensaver tabs in the
Display Properties dialog. This is
accomplished by setting one of the many
"Group Pollicies".
With
considerable effort, running a good
anti-spyware program like "Spybot search and
Destroy" from an external device in Safe
mode can remove the malware. However, the
wallpaper may remain and the Display
Properties tabs may remain hidden. For the
remainder of this article, I'll assume the
malware has been removed and will
concentrate on getting the tabs back.
Group
Policies are a feature of XP Pro and Vista
Business and Ultimate that provide
centralized management and configuration of
computers. They are used in business
environments, and are common in schools and
other small organizations to restrict
certain actions that may pose potential
security risks. A utility called the Group
Policies Editor is provided to manage these
500 or so settings.
Most of
these policy settings are provided in XP and
Vista Home versions, but there is no editor
provided to manage them. All are controlled
by settings in the registry so can only be
controlled by directly editing it. For those
brave enough to try modifying the registry,
I have compiled a list of these settings and
placed it in the Articles section. It can
also be downloaded by clicking
HERE.
The
particular registry key that hides the
Desktop and Screensaver tabs is
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
and the DWORD settings are
NoDispBackgroundPage = 1 and
NoDispScrSavPage = 1 respectively. If these
values are set to 0 or the key doesn't exist
the associated tabs will be displayed. So,
to fix the problem in this question, all we
have to do is delete this key.
There are too many settings to easily write
a small program that will address them
individually. Fortunately, when XP or Vista
Home is installed, none of these registry
keys are created by default. To make this
easy, I have written a little program that
will delete any of these Policies registry
keys should they have been added.
Running it will return all settings to the
"As Installed" default settings. This
program is located in the Download section
or can be downloaded by clicking
HERE. |
