Active Desktop Recovery Error Windows XP

So I have a M4300 Dell Precision laptop for work, and wouldn't you know that the left side of the screen started to go dim, then at the beginning of this week, the whole screen went dim! Fortunately for Dell business support, they had the part ordered and a Dell tech at my front door within 24 hours to fix. Everything went through smoothly until we started the machine backup and wouldn't you know, my desktop had been replaced by a bright white background with the dreaded:

Active Desktop Recovery

That gives me a bunch of errors when I try and recover my Active desktop. So after a quick search online, I figured out the fix here. If you are using IE7, I would suggest that you try Option 1. If not and you are using IE6, try Option 2.

Option 1
The first option is to go to Start > Run > Type "regedit" and Hit Enter. Traverse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components

and locate: DeskHtmlVersion. It should currently be set to 272. Right click on this and go to Modify and change the radio button from Hex to Decimal. The field should change to 272. Delete 272 and replace it with just 0 and save. Refresh your desktop and you should have your previous screen!

Option 2
Go into your Control Panel > Folder options and have it show all files (including hidden). Then do a search on your C drive for Desktop.htt. Delete all instances of this file and restart your system.

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