Member Avatar for dorotalp91

This may seem like a very stupid question but I have done this before and I don't know what happened, the text under my icons on my desktop got "re-highlighted" I had them transparent (I did this a while ago) and somehow the highlighting is back. The only thing I remember doing that might temper with that is I plugged in a different monitor to my cpu for a few hours, switched back to the old one and boom. I know this might make no sense but every remedy I've read about online DOES NOT HELP. Yes I unlocked the web items on my desktop, yes I did go to System Properties and under Advanced > Performance > Settings unchecked the box that allows drop shadows on desktop icons. What next?...

Now I remember how much I hate the icon text highlighted in stupid blue. -_-

I have a Royale Remixed theme on my windows but this has never changed my icons from their transparency.
And attached is a picture to my desktop.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/834/grre.jpg/

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This is a common Windows XP quirk: the opaque blue boxes under icon text are normally caused by either the visual-effects setting that creates the XP “transparent with drop shadow” label, or by Active Desktop / web items (or an HTML wallpaper) forcing a solid background. pointed at the usual cause; since already tried the obvious UI toggles, the next steps are deeper checks and a simple registry fix. See a short explanation of the setting and how Active Desktop affects this in the How-To Geek writeup and vendor support notes. (How-To Geek: "Why do my icons have a background color in Windows XP?"). (howtogeek.com)

Quick checklist (apply in order):

  1. Confirm the wallpaper is a plain image file (BMP/JPG/PNG), not an HTML/web desktop item (Display Properties → Desktop → Customize Desktop → Web tab — clear any entries).
  2. Temporarily switch to a default theme (Luna or Windows Classic) and log off/log on to rule out theme/visual-style interference.
  3. Restart Explorer (Task Manager → End process explorer.exe → File → New Task → explorer.exe) or reboot after changing settings so Windows redraws the desktop.
  4. If the UI option won't stick, edit the registry value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\ListviewShadow and set it to 1 to re-enable the transparent label behavior (backup the registry first). Several XP-era tweak guides and modern writeups describe this key and the restart requirement. (tweakhound.com)

If the problem persists after those steps, the cause is often a theme/third‑party shell or a display-driver/monitor-change side effect (switching monitors can cause Windows to reapply display settings). Re-saving the wallpaper as a standard BMP/JPG and testing with the default theme will usually expose the culprit. For background reading on the Active Desktop interaction and the original Microsoft guidance, see the archived support notes and community threads. (pcreview.co.uk)

Member Avatar for gerbil

I see what you mean. This is what is happening: you are seeing the solid colour of your wallpaper background in a box sized to suit the icon labels. This box is a window that shows the background layer beneath your current wallpaper, the car and wall; to remove that transparency effect you must CHECK the drop shadow box AND unlock web items.
Else you can either tone down the colour of your background to something you like via desktop properties, or resize the picture to occupy a central portion only.

Edited by gerbil because: n/a
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