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I feel I have wasted everyone’s time. Sorry about that. I have no idea how it happened since I’m the only user on this machine, and have not even thought about the power settings in months. Here’s the problem and the fix:

Thanks to all of you.

I don’t use a screensaver. I did pick a different theme which used a static desktop background. But when I went back to my theme, it still didn’t rotate background pictures.
I am going to change themes again, rebooting each time. I’ll get back here later. Thanks.

It was from Acer and is not listed in control panel. I opened the Acer monitor properties in the device manager and clicked Roll Back, but nothing changed with the desktop slideshow.

The Acer updates are not listed in Installed Updates (they show up in the history). They do not show up in Add/Remove or Revo either. I’ll get to the other things later.

It’s a desktop computer. Right now I have it set to 10 seconds, so I’ll know if it starts working again. Shuffle is checked, but I tried it both ways. 12 of 14 pictures in the folder are selected, which is the way it’s always been. I haven’t moved or renamed anything affecting that picture folder, and I can manually select any picture in it using the desktop’s context menu “Next desktop background” selection. I hoped applying another theme and then going back might help, but no such luck. As with any problem, I tried rebooting first.

The last updates installed were on May 1: KB975496 and KB980408 for Windows 7, and the malicious software tool. Before that was AL1916W for Acer display – now there’s a suspect. But that was on April 18 along with 10 Windows and Office updates, and I don’t think this has been a problem for that long. However I will uninstall the Acer update and see what happens. I can try a restore back to that time. Luckily, I haven’t been tinkering too much since then.

Thanks,
Rusty

My computer for the most part runs quick and smoothly. I started this more out of curiosity than necessity. The times I wish for more power are when I am watching streaming TV shows or movies, which are becoming popular on the web. Am I right in thinking a video card with more memory would buffer more of the feed and give a smoother experience? Right now, it will stop to buffer once in a while, but usually not enough to be a nuisance. It would be nice to eliminate that though. I am not a gamer. I mostly use it to do banking and web surfing. I like to watch NASA feeds, some sports and more recently, sci-fi shows and movies.

…If you look at the System Page (WInkey+Break), it will say something similar to:

Installed Memory (RAM): 4 GB (3.25 GB usable)

The exact amount usable depends on memory that the motherboard may reserve.

Terry

Mine says: Installed Memory (RAM): 3 GB (2.75 GB usable)

Okay, thanks, people, I appreciate your responses. That’s what I needed to know. I will not spend any money on RAM. Sorry, Ted, I won’t be sending you any bucks either. My computer runs fast and clean anyway, so I will just enjoy what I have.
But I will try to learn a little more about how memory is allocated and addressed. Thanks, BATcher for that link to the article.

How about a new drive? I looked on newegg and laptop DVD drives are $16 and up. I admit to not knowing much about the hardware workings of laptops though.

Is it still the 0X1~8E and the BHDRVx86 file error? That would still point to Norton.

Here’s how to take ownership of a whole folder full of files in one click:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

That link gave me a 404. This link worked for me: http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptsync.asp

If you mean BHDRVx86 instead of BHDFVx86.sys, that’s a Norton file. Gerald, above, asked the next question.

Do resident antivirus programs run in safe mode? I have already tried booting in to safemode, but thought that nothing resident starts up.

Check task manager after you boot into safe mode and kill the process if the AV is still running. Hopefully it will stay off. My Norton 2010 has a switch called “Product Tamper Protection.” I think most AV programs have something like that, but I know in the past a lot of people couldn’t do a restore until they disabled that on whatever AV they had.

For those of us who still dabble in XP, could we trouble you to paste up the registry code you are referring to?

Thanks,
Rusty