Why does my background picture appear and then disappear?

Question

I started getting an odd message when booting up: It was a blue screeen with the warning "You computer has been infected with spyware." It then listed my IP, processor, memory & OS. It then offered to take care of these problems by two "click here" options. I didn't! I then ran all the spyware & virus programs I have (PCTools Antivirus, Spyware Doctor,Registry Mechanic; Spybot & AdAware). I even went to PCMag & downloaded the trial version of Webroot Spy Sweeper. They ALL found numerous infections & cleaned them up. The warning screen is gone, but now my background is white. Now when I boot up, the background photograph appears temporarily, then goes white.

I have the WinXP firewall & McAffee Security Center active.

Answer

This question was answered on May 9, 2006. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

The simple fix is to go to the background page and pick your background again. What happened is that your background file through you moving it or it possibly getting renamed, or mabe it was even infected with the spyware itself, so it was moved and thus the pointer that windows uses to look for the picture to display is now pointing to the wrong location.

Author

Posted by Darren of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on May 9, 2006