Windows 7 Display settings "randomly" change

[Dealea86]

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit on an ASUS 501j laptop with an intel pentium dual core processor. I bought the laptop just over a week ago, and it had a clean install of Windows 7.

Every now and then (I haven't worked out a pattern yet), my background will disappear and be replaced with a generic white ASUS background. Under the personalize section of the control panel, it says it's running a new Unsaved Theme instead of my saved theme that I had it set to.

My laptop mouse has been randomly disabled twice.

Also, I despise the AutoHide function of the taskbar, so I always turn it off. But (again, seemingly randomly) the taskbar switches to AutoHide, with the button clicked.

The only time I noticed a distinct cause-effect for one of these problems was once when I was rebooting. The background was there, but the taskbar was gone. The only thing I did after logging in was to change the taskbar settings to unclick the AutoHide box. The background disappeared.

I'm running security software, and my last scan was clean, so I don't think it's a virus. Does anyone have any idea what's the problem here?

Thanks.

 

[Saltgrass]

Is this computer new with Win 7 installed at the factory?

I have seen some things change if you are running programs that are not compatible with the Aero Function of Windows, usually older ones.

If this is not a new computer, and someone else installed Win 7, you might want to think about a repair install, or at least opening an administrative command window and type:

SFC /scannow

This should check your system files and replace any that might be corrupted.

 

[Dealea86]

My laptop was bought from a major online electronics seller, but it was bought refurbished. I assume that still means a factory install, but just in case I ran SFC. No problems.

I can only think of two programs that might have compatability issues. One is an old game (came out in 2003-ish) and the other would be my imported profile settings for Firefox. Both had been running for a few days before the problems popped up. I can certainly uninstall the game and see if that helps.

Thank you for your reply. Let me know if you think of anything else!