Tech: Active Desktop Recovery gone kerflooey!

Subject: Tech: Active Desktop Recovery gone kerflooey!
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 24 Jun 09 - 01:29 PM

The thread subject says most of it.

When I boot, the desktop, instead of its normal light blue, shows up white; I get the ordinary display of icons; but there's a large overlay of text which tells me, ACTIVE DESKTOP RECOVERY. Microsoft Windows has received an unexpected error. As a precaution, your Active Desktop Recovery has been turned off. It then gives some instructions for fixing the situation, which don't work.

I have no idea what I might have done prior to this thing coming up, that might have caused it.

Rebooting does not fix the situation. Running a Registry Cleaner program does not fix it. Everything seems to operate normally, except for the color of the desktop and the great big overlay of message, which in some places overlays and hides an icon.   

In case it's relevant, I'm on XP Pro, SP3, operating a Compaq Workstation, EVO W4000. Memory 1023. Lots of free HD space. I have Norton 360 running, which provides me a firewall running all the time, and monitors downloads and uploads and emails incoming and outgoing, and Norton tells me "no virus".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Tech: Active Desktop Recovery gone kerflooey!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Jun 09 - 11:30 AM

Dave,

I sounds like it's time to run a few other programs--AVG, Spybot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster. But before you do that, visit the Symantec site and see if they have any alerts or offer suggestions. There are some other programs folks at Mudcat run, I listed some I use here. See if any or all detect a virus or worm.

Can you do control/alt/delete and view the processes that are running? Is there unusual activity?

You will probably need a second non-corrupted computer to download software and move it over manually via thumb drive or disk to check this out if the programs aren't there and resident. If you have a virus that is blocking the download of such programs, that is.

Have you done a search with those symptoms to see what comes out on top in Google? If it's a virus causing this then a frequently asked question by others similarly afflicted should come to the top in a query.

This is just a start. There are programs out there to solve specific programs once you discover them. I like http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ for finding some of these answers.

SRS