Desktop Icon Problem

[cabinetman]

Had lunch today with a buddy and we yaked about the Magic Jack that he cancelled. Anyway, he said he was on a website and went to copy some text and highlighted it. Then he can't remember if he clicked "save as", or "print", or just clicked something by mistake, but whatever he clicked highlighted all his desktop icons. He can't un-highlight them. Any suggestions?
.

[Nilt]

Sounds like Sticky Keys got turned on. Have him run through the steps here to kill the so-called feature.

[Daryl]

Windows XP? Maybe a system restore would take care of it.

[Ed62]

Sounds like Sticky Keys got turned on. Have him run through the steps here to kill the so-called feature.

Yep. My wife has become a pro at holding the key down too long.

Ed

[Nilt]

Yeah. I do this a lot too. I have a .reg file that'll kill them on a given system that I keep around for whenever I have to reinstall.

[LCHIEN]

Ctrl-A is normally the select all hot key, this will highlight all the desktop icons if used on the desktop.

To unselect all just click the left mouse key on an open area of the desktop...
I guess your problem is not so simple, if you can't get them to un-select.

[RayintheUK]

One of two things has happened. Try this:

He may have Active Desktop accidentally enabled:

Right-click on the desktop, hover on "arrange Icons by" - when the next context menu opens, deselect "lock web items on desktop"... problem solved.

or

System Properties>Advanced tab, under performance, click settings. In the Performance Options dialog box, check the second last option (Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop). This will get rid of the "Highlighted Icons" if that was how they became "highlighted."

Ray.