Well I don't know how it happened, but one day when I changed my background to a new background it seemed to work alright. Later as I was signing off, my icons cleared and then my old background popped up and then logged off. When I sign on, my old background pops up and then my new one. I think it's sort of cool but I don't know how I did it. If anyone could tell me I would really appreciate it. I have windows xp with a dell inspiron 1150 if its important.

Is it possible that your new background is an HTML or other Internet file?
When you, for example, choose a website as a background (this is called an Active Background), it will paste over your original background. So the old will still be under it.

When you log off, the HTML file is deactivated, and the old beackground comes up.

No I haven't ever done that. But I guess it seems to be something like that. Whenever i change my background to a default background, my previous background still pops up when I sign off and on. I have never done this before but that's what it does. lol

Hi

This may not be the correct explanation for your "problem",but I will try.I don't know if you have multiple accounts,and wether you have admin privileges,or not.If you do use multiple accounts,I believe this might be correct explanation.You have one default account windows uses.Now,every time you start windows,it will first load settings from that default account,and use its background image.When you logon to your account,windows will load your settings,and put your new background image on the desktop.

This is how things worked under Win9x.Come to think of it,it is unlikely that this is the solution to your "problem".Perhaps your windows is experiencing some new bug,that may not be so horrible and cool

Keep us informed on the development of this...

Cheers

Galahad has an interesting point, there, except from memory Windows XP does not automatically log into an account unless you have an autologin set up with Powertoys for Windows XP (great software by the way, released by Microsoft but in no way supported).

Anyways, Erwin_X had a really good point there about HTML/internet background files. In Windows 98 and ME this was referred to as "Active Desktop" and it needed to be enabled not only to have web pages (eg, HTML) for your desktop image but also to have JPEG's, PNG's and GIF's as your background image too. A bitmap file used to come up, and then, while your desktop was loading, the proper background image loaded too.

By default, Windows backgrounds can only handle BMP files (i've disabled some Windows setting on my PC, and so now i can't use JPEG's, GIF's, etc.). What you'll probably find is happening is something similar to what used to go on in Windows 98/ME - the standard bitmap background loads first, and then, while the rest of your desktop loads, the PNG/JPEG/GIF/whatever file loads on top.

A simple solution (this is what I do on my computer) is to just convert any non-BMP format graphics that you want to set as your background. Just open them in Paint or any other graphics program and "Save As..." with a type "Bitmap" - these have extension BMP or DIB.

Hope I've helped

I think it depends on what version of Windows you're using. There are still some out there who use a version older than XP. In Windows 98, and 2000 I think, the background that you see last is the admin's while the background you have while logged in is the one you have for your account. I haven't used an older version of Windows for a while, so I'm not sure whether this information is correct.

Hope this helps you