I have a Windows XP (Home) machine with a very weird problem. I cannot set the background image properly. That is, I can go to Desktop, Background image, select a different one, but the background has still the same solid colour. Now if I kill explorer.exe, I can see the background image correctly, but starting explorer.exe gives me the solid colour background back again.

If I go to Desktop, Customise Desktop, Web, there is a checkbox at the bottom called "Fix desktop icons" or something like this (not sure how it's called in the English version.) If I enable this checkbox, I can see the background, but the desktop icons are drawn with solid-colour backgrounds (even though I have the "draw icon labels transparently" option set.) If I disable the checkbox, I have no desktop background. Active Desktop is disabled.

Any idea how to fix this and what might be the reason for this behaviour in the first place?