# desk.cpl



## TabZ (Oct 26, 2004)

Hello

I have just downloaded and installed some screensavers. No big deal you may think, but now everytime i try click on the screensaver tab in display properties i'm greeted with the following message :

An error occurred while Windows was working with the control panel file C:\WINNT\system32\desk.cpl.

I have searched on google for a good hour, trying to find some relevant information, but i can find nothing, other than people who have had this error after installing new graphics card drivers. Typically the solution is to reinstall graphics card drivers.

I've tried removing the recently added screensavers to no avail.

Im running windows 200 pro sp4.

Any help would, as always, be greatly apprieciated.

thanks in advance,

TabZ

PS - I have tried running sfc /scannow with my win2k disk inserted. Still no joy


----------



## idtent (Aug 13, 2003)

http://www.hardcoreware.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-3247.html

Does this help?


----------



## TabZ (Oct 26, 2004)

Thanks, but not really, not that information alone anyway.

As i said, i found some stuff on this subject but it all pertained to errors which occured after graphics card driver installations. However i fear my problem is different. 

it follows that i should look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\Desk\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers
since im having trouble with desk.cpl but once there i really dont know what im supposed to do.

in that folder there are 3 sub folders :

DeskhtmlExt
MSICPL
PlusPack CPL Extension

I wouldnt like to hazard a guess at which of this folders could be deleted to fix the problem. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction?


----------



## idtent (Aug 13, 2003)

Click on the propertysheethandler to highlight it, click file, export and save it somewhere you can find it again. Name it backup.reg or something like that. Then delete the whole thing along with everything under it.

If it causes problems, simply double click the backup.reg file and click yes to merge it back into your registry.


----------



## TabZ (Oct 26, 2004)

wow, speedy response.

Alas it didnt fix the problem, it just caused some of the options on display properties to disapear, and i still got the same error message when trying to access the screensaver tab.

I also tried deleting MSICPL only, but nothing at all appeared to happen, and the error remained.

Ive restored the reg back to how it was.
Thanks for trying.
Any other ideas?


----------



## TabZ (Oct 26, 2004)

Fixed it!!!

The screensaver i installed had created files which i missed when deleting after i noticed the problem.
 Sorry to waste your time, and thanks once again for your help.

At least some good has come of this, I've found these forums for the future 

TabZ (happy again)


----------



## idtent (Aug 13, 2003)

Glad to hear it. Thanks for posting. Maybe someone in the future will be able to fix the problem. 

Could you post the files you missed during deletion?? (To help future problems)

TIA


----------

