cant change background

mastertrinity

mastertrinity

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Luke
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hey all, the other day i saw a really nice image of the earth from mars and i wanted to use it as a desktop wallpaper. i do the usually and save it and go into control panel but when i try and get into the background change it says "feature disabled contact system manager".

now i cant remember disabling it but i might have when i was doing a few changes. is there anyway of enabling it? or am i stuck with a red background permanently?
 
What OS and is it a corporate machine or your own?
 
Right click the pic and choose 'set as desktop background' ? I know this doesn't solve your admin rights problem but should change your background
 
its a windows 7 dell inspiron 1545 laptop, its my own and im the admin.

ive tried right clicking and it wont save as background so i presume this is because you cant due to it not working in control panel aswell.
 
Have you ever joined the laptop to a corporate domain before? You can often pick up lockdown policies if you do.
Have a look in Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Local Policies or run gpedit.msc. It does also depend on what version of Windows 7 you have as I dont think Home Premium allows domain related security.
 
ive never used it for a corporate domain, its just personal use and it dont know whats going on with it as one minute i could change and next minute i cant.

if worst comes to the worst then i will do a complete restall.
 
It does sound a lot like a local policy has been setup to restrict this change but if you've not done it and the machine has bee nowhere near a domain then it's hard to figure out why. To check this, open the group policy editior by typing gpedit.msc onto the "search prograns and files" box and hit enter. If a UAC box shows up, hit yes. Now click down the following path.

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Desktop > Desktop (again)

In there you will find the various policy options that control changing the wallpaper.
 
My daughter has Windows 7 on her netbook and has the same problem, after a little fishing it turns out to be windows 7 basic and it won't let you change the background :annoyed:
 
yeah i heard about the basic version unable to have change.

well ive done it! i googled it and found the problem and had to delve deep down into the regedit and then go through the HKEY_CURRENT_USER and get into policies then active desktop and found that there was a "nochangewallpaper" with a property set to 1, i simply deleted it and reset my computer and its worked fine now.

question is how the hell did i disable the background unless when i got a virus it did a few change abouts and then i removed it. i also noticed that my task manager was disabled so i enabled that also.

cheers for the help guys.
 
foggy4ever said:
My daughter has Windows 7 on her netbook and has the same problem, after a little fishing it turns out to be windows 7 basic and it won't let you change the background :annoyed:
Click to expand...

Yeah, that will be Windows 7 Starter, specifically designed to run on netbooks, its a slightly more light weight version of Win 7 and has a few features removed - Background changing included.
It comes pre-installed on Netbooks, but no other laptops.
 
Was just going to say, if it's Windows 7 Basic/Starter you can't change the background.

To answer your question though:

mastertrinity said:
question is how the hell did i disable the background unless when i got a virus it did a few change abouts and then i removed it. i also noticed that my task manager was disabled so i enabled that also.
Click to expand...

Possibly a recent update maybe? Some updates to reset settings to their default and other reasons, possibly a result of installing another program.
 
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