Our third and final reader Q & A of the week comes from Walter via the feedback page. Remember that you can also visit our friendly forums for help with your technical troubles.

Q: A while back, my desktop seemed to decide it didn't want to "obey" me anymore. Along the left edge of the desk top appeared a wide grey margin (about 2.5 " wide), the desktop won't let me place the icons where I want them to be even though they will shift when I choose one of the options in the context menu, and finally I am not able to change the background on the desk top (under properties, when I apply a new background, nothing changes when I go back to my desktop). Regarding the grey margin, it has 3 drop down menus: 1.Folder Tasks 2.Other Places and 3.Details. I hope you can give me an idea of what's going on and what I might do. Thanks.

It seems that a few other people have had this issue too. Not sure of the cause but some of the evidence points to images like animated GIF files, being set as the desktop image in certain situations. Anyway, here's a link to a registry file that should reset the desktop to its original state. Just download it, unpack and run the executable file.