removing Dell background on preconfigured servers

Dell prebuilt servers come with a wallpaper background that appears whenever you remote desktop to that box - which can be very slow over a low bandwidth connection. Found this registry change that will get rid of that default wallpaper:

Open Regedit and modify the following key
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper
Change value from \windows\system32\DELLWALL.BMP to blank, as in nothing, not the word ‘blank’.

fix for WinXP2008 virus and xpsecuritycenter

I haven't tested this yet honestly - but an associate gave me this batch file saying that it would clean out the WinXP2008 virus if you run it in safe mode.  True?  Not sure yet.

http://www.t-solve.com/software/roguefix_2.188.bat

dealing with malware that alters display properties

Over the past two weeks, I've seen three pieces of malware that alter the display properties in Windows XP. In each instance, I was able to get rid of malware with Symantec AV 10.1 and then Avast Antivirus 4.8. But the display properties remained changed.

In one instance, it created a strange screen saver that emulated a BSOD. In another instance, it changed the wallpaper to a spyware warning. But the weird thing is that if you go to the display properties, the necessary tabs you need to reverse those problems are gone.

Best course of action is to use this wallpaper hijacker remover:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Wallpaper_Hijack_Remover_d4816.html

Here is what an altered wallpaper looks like: