How to Disable Active Desktop Recovery in Windows XP

Often when you restart your Windows XP computer, your desktop looks weird and shows an Active Desktop Recovery error. One of the reasons for this error is that your Internet Explorer browser stopped working in the middle or you had to restart your computer because some application crashed. You can click on the Restore my Active Desktop button in the Active Desktop Recovery page shown on your desktop to restore your desktop. But if this error is occurring too often, then you may want to disable the Active Desktop Recovery completely. Here is how you can disable Active Desktop Recovery :

Method 1 :

1. Click on the Start Menu in the bottom-left corner and choose Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel, choose Appearance and Themes and then click on the Desktop as shown.

   

3. In the Desktop Properties window that shows up, select the Desktop tab and then click on the Customize Desktop button as shown.

   

4. In the Desktop Items window, select the Web tab. Under the Web pages category, un-check all the selected checkboxes and click on the OK button as shown.

   

5. This would disable the Active Desktop Recovery in your Windows XP computer and save you from this annoying error in the future.

Method 2 :

1. Press the key combination Windows logo key + R to open the Run dialog. Type in regedit.exe in the Run dialog and press Enter. This would open the Windows Registry Editor.

   

2. In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key : HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer. If this key does not exist, then create it.
3. While this key is selected in the Registry Editor, right-click on the right-side panel and choose New → DWORD value and type NoActiveDesktop as the value name. By default, this value is set to 0 and this is what it should be to disable Active Desktop Recovery.

   

4. Restart Windows for the changes to take effect.