This thing on my desktop..

[KH-Cloudy]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y151/Yokaidekun/Wtf.jpg

Yea, I was wondering how you can get rid of the thing on the left side.

[o_O]

What operating system is that? If it's Windows, it's clearly shelled like crazy so what shell replacement are you using? If something else....... what? :p

[KH-Cloudy]

Windows XP, I think it may be Style XP that's causing this though. Wasn't happening yesterday when I used it.

[o_O]

StyleXP appears not to be a shell replacement, but an engine for hacking normal Windows themes.

Try this so that we can tell if it really is StyleXP doing it:
- Click Start > Run, type "msconfig" in the box and press ok.
- Go to the startup tab and try to find anything in the list that relates to StyleXP.
- Remove the checks from the boxes beside those items. WARNING: If you don't know what it does, don't touch it (if it has StyleXP in the title or filename it's safe). :p
- Go to Start > Control Panel (or Start > Settings > Control Panel).
- If you have the "Display" icon click that, otherwise click "Appearance and Themes" and then "Display".
- Change your theme to "Windows XP Classic" or any other default one.
- Restart your computron.
- Check if annoying bar is still present.

If it is, just reverse what you did and it'll be back to normal.

[KH-Cloudy]

Just restarted and did what you instructed me to do.

Annoying bar is gone! Hooray :D

Thank you very much, Face. :)

Is it safe to use Style XP, or will it cause another annoying bar?

[o_O]

Well, it's probably something to do with the style that you had on. From a bit of research, StyleXP can operate in two different ways:

- The first is just to change the appearance of window titlebars, buttons, taskbar, startmenu, etc. by decompiling the default Windows theme file, altering it, and recompiling it. That kind of means that you're using a normal Windows style and StyleXP doesn't need to be running to keep the style on.
- The second requires StyleXP to actually be running, and this would be if you had the option to rotate bits of the theme about. For example, you can have a bunch of wallpapers that change like a slideshow, or themes that change to another every few minutes.

To be perfectly honest, after researching the program, I can't see any reason that it would produce a bar like that since it's not in the normal functionality of the program. I'm actually wondering if it was just the restart that fixed it; had you tried it before? If you like you can re-enable StyleXP and see if it brings the bar back. It won't break anything and you can always re-disable it, so it can't hurt to try, I guess. :p

EDIT: I just noticed that the headings "Other places", "Details" and "Folder Tasks" are the same as what appear on a normal folder in XP, only they look different thanks to StyleXP. What appears to have happened is a regular folder seems to have giant-sized itself and planted itself upon your desktop. Do you normally have a white background like that? You wouldn't be able to move it very easily and it could easily be a bug in StyleXP causing it. If you enable it again and it happens, click on the white background and press <b>Alt+F4</b>. This will close the folder, if indeed that's what it is, and you should be able to continue using StyleXP. :p

[Yamaneko]

Unless you have custom icons or custom login screens there's no real point in having StyleXP. If you want third-party themes in XP you can patch uxtheme.dll yourself with this utility (http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/UXTheme-MultiPatcher.shtml). Works great and has no memory footprint since once you patch the file you can delete the utility.

[rubah]

what utility was that, yams?

[Yamaneko]

Fixed the link.

[o_O]

One other thing: If you want the get rid of that bar for all folders, not just ones that commandeer your desktop you can with Tools > Folder Options > Show Common Tasks. :p

[KH-Cloudy]

Ahh, great info to learn about :)

After I unticked the check from StyleXP from msconfig, the "folder" was gone.

And no, my background isn't normally white.

Next time it happens again, I'll know what to do.

Thanks again Face! :D

[o_O]

No problem. :p

P.S. Usually when you deactivate an item in msconfig it jumps to the end next time you need to access it.