“My desktop icons either disappear or reverse rearrange at will. Also, my screen-saver photos sometimes appear in black and white rather than color. I have a 7 month old Dell 530 with Vista Home Premium and I have a new 23″ Samsung monitor. All drivers appear to be updated. Don’t know if the 2 things are related.”
Vista Icons disappearing, few things to try:
Right click anywhere on your desktop, go to “View”, now be sure “Show Desktop Icons” is checked off and make sure “Auto Arrange” is not checked either. If the Show Desktop icon is already checked off try unchecking it save it then go back and check it again.
Right click anywhere on the desktop select “Sort Icons” by Name that might make the icons reappear.
If the “disappeared icons” are icons you added like the Computer, Recyle Bin, or Documents folder and now they are not on the desktop you can manually add them again by right clicking on the desktop -> Personalize -> Change Desktop Icons. Now select the icons you want back on the Desktop and click “Apply” when finished.
Other things you can try are System Restore to a previous date when the icons was there or simply by restarting the computer can help as well.
Believe or not some people have had luck simply by changing the power settings. Instructions on power settings.
Not likely the solution but it’s always a good idea to do spyware and virus scans.
Screen Saver turns Black and White:
Try right clicking the desktop now select “Personalization” than “Screen Saver” now to the left of the screen saver option you will see “Settings” click on that. Go to “Use this theme near the bottom of the dialog box it’s probably on “Black and White” right now, click on it and the drop down menu will appear simply select what you want and hit “Save” when done.