Getting rid of Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager

I decided that the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager powertoy is a piece of complete garbage and deserved to be removed.

So...
I removed its toolbar item, uninstalled it, ran Norton WinDoctor to get rid of registry entries it forgot to remove (idiots!), and restarted the computer.

However, it has still left behind a problem which I am 90% sure was caused by it. (And it was the problem that made me decide to get rid of it).
My desktop icons are using the desktop background as the background image for text, and transparency for icons is messed up (seems to only have two values - visible and invisible - instead of the ability for nice, smooth transparency).

Going to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings tells me that these icons should have no black background for text (text should instead have drop shadows and be drawn right on top of the desktop background), and every 'visual effect' is turned on... so it should look decent.

That is not the strangest part, though. If I drag an icon, the image being dragged looks right, with proper alpha and nothing noticeably screwed up.

Yes, this is official Microsoft software here, and yet another thing that both Gnome and KDE do better than Windows. Surprised?

Here is a screenshot:

Icon on left, icon being dragged on right.

Have you suffered like me, or do you know what to do?

Thanks in advance.

Buy a bullet

Rent a gun

Put the PC out of it's misery!

Guess work ahead...

Start / Run - type in Services.msc and disable the Themes service.

Right click on desktop, properties > appearance and change it to "Windows Classic".

Reboot PC and then start from the top doing the reverse :)

Qube: Thanks for the suggestion.
Didn't change anything, though :(

How did you know?
I'm trying hopelessly to revive the thing without a reformat...

It's really weird where it doesn't work, though, which is why I haven't given up.
The ONLY thing that doesn't work well is the Windows desktop. It has all sorts of graphical glitches like windows still haing a ghost image over the desktop after being closed, the above stuff, and some standard stupidity in Explorer... perhaps a bit more than usual.
As soon as I get into a fullscreen app, everything runs as well as it ever did.

Next up is a scheduled AdAware, Virus Scan, Defrag and ScanDisk.

The annoying thing here is that the computer honestly started working like this some time while I was away... and I suspect that it is either the fault of MSVDM or my evil brother.

Try this one:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=305117

Okay, I'll try it...
That should work, and if it doesn't, I'll know what to ask MS Support. (And sorry, I should have looked there in the first place).


Hmm... Microsoft, eh?
Try this: Type wm_setposition into the search box there and hit Search.
Quite fun :)
I wonder if that window message does anything...

Edit:
Nope, it still didn't solve my problem.
I seem to be getting increased instability here... yet, this is still only in the Windows UI.
Very annoying. Completely Microsoft's fault, too, assuming I am correct in blaming this on MSVDM.
(It froze while trying to Switch Users right after I tried that solution, forcing me to restart).

Time for a virus scan, I guess.
*Sigh*

System restore couldn't happen, by the way. Brilliantly, it seems to only keep reference points from the current month... which is kind of useless.

Microsoft.com doesn't tell me much more about MSVDM... I wonder if tech support will.

Edit:
Nope, they won't.
Time for drastic measures: A new user account!
I'll miss you, old friend :'-(

Edit:
OMG!
First they once again trick me into installing something that can't be uninstalled (hm... old versions of Windows Messenger, Internet Explorer in older Windowses... I smell a trend here. Still, not as bad as NetBeans IDE, which won't uninstall because it doesn't like my version of JRE!)... then they ruin my favourite new web site glitch!
To see what I was talking about with searching wm_setposition, look here.
It returns "No Results found. Did you mean wm_sex position?".

:(

Err... before I destroy my own thread again: Has anyone else had this problem?

A new discovery!
(And yah, I realized that moving accounts would cost me all my settings so it just doesn't feel like it's worth the bother).

It seems that things are not what they seem.
Looking what I thought was the desktop background with WinDowse tells me that its handle is 000700D0, but this should actually be 0. (The desktop - the parent window to everything else - always has a handle of 0).

I discovered this while watching a video via the VLC Media Player, and I discovered an option that makes it draw to the desktop.
What I saw instead was an unchanging background image, but the grayish area around my icons was being filled in by chunks of video.

I can't get a real screenshot of that, but I can fake it...


I think MSVDM is acquiring the current desktop background image and drawing it by itself instead, yet the desktop icons still use the real desktop for their transparency. (And somehow MSVDM is keeping that from drawing anything. Perhaps it just doesn't bother when there is a window on top of it).

So we're almost there!

Still a mystery as to how to get rid of it for good though. I did uninstall the thing, after all. One would think that that would work...

Edit:
Confirmed that the background image being seen is not the real desktop.
Using Windowse, I can make that image invisible, disable it, or even move it to another location to reveal the real desktop underneath. (Definietly the real desktop down there, as VLC draws video to it).
The real desktop seems to be permanently without an image.
Still no solution, and there is nothing suspect in startup processes.


Edit:
Excuse my slowness here...
Turns out that it has actually created zillions of layers of desktop, all of which must be the different virtual desktops from MSVDM.
Strangely, the layer which holds icons is seperate from the layer which holds the images. I suppose this was an adjustment carried out by the program...
I removed a bunch of desktops, and I eventually reached one which still doesn't have a handle of 0 but which cannot be modified.

I've already ranted about 6 times regarding how stupid it is that Microsoft doesn't recognize the importance of a decent uninstaller, so I won't do it again.

What the heck have you done this time, Windows?

> What the heck have you done this time, Windows?

Good old Windows eh? The cutting edge of modern OS goodness!