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When you right-click on the Desktop and choose Personalize, the following options are displayed by default in the Personalize appearance and sounds page in Windows Vista:

1. Window Color and Appearance
2. Desktop Background
3. Screen Saver
4. Sounds
5. Mouse Pointers
6. Theme
7. Display Settings

If one or more of the above options are missing, this may be due to Policies applied in your system. Here are the related Group Policy settings. (Each one links to the Microsoft Technet Website.)

• NoDispCpl
• NoDispAppearancePage
• NoDispBackgroundPage
• NoDispScrSavPage
• NoThemesTab
• NoChangingWallPaper

With these Policies enabled, you’ll see the following message when clicking Change desktop icons Tasks pane option in the Personalization window, or when accessing Display Settings.

If your system is a part of a company network, the Policies may have been enabled by your network administrator, and there is no way to bypass these Policy settings. In case your system is not connected to any network and you have administrative privileges in the system, you can remove the Policy settings via the registry or using the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). Note that the Group Policy Editor is unavailable in Windows Vista Home Editions.

Removing the Policy settings

Download personalize_restore_vista.vbs and save to Desktop. Double-click the file to run it. Click Continue when you see the User Account Control (UAC) elevation prompt. Logoff and login back (or restart Explorer.exe process) for the change to take effect.

More Information

Here are the registry locations where the Policy settings for the Personalize page are stored:

Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

SEE ALSO

Restore missing tabs to the Display properties dialog in Windows XP

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