Windows desktop may not appear correctly after exiting "Age of Empires II"

After you exit Age Of Empires II, the desktop wallpaper may shrink and appear in the upper left corner of the Windows desktop instead of appearing in its original size and orientation (like before you started the game). Additionally, some or all desktop icons may not be visible.

Users who are running Microsoft Windows XP must upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 to resolve this issue. For additional information about how to download Windows XP Service Pack 2, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Windows 2000 users can follow these steps to work around this problem, open the Display Properties dialog and change the Picture Display setting to a different value. This forces the operating system to redisplay all deskop items in their correct locations. Each time you exit the game, you have to follow these steps:

1. Anywhere on the desktop, right-click and then click Properties.
2. In the dialog box, on the Background tab, change the wallpaper display style by selecting from the Picture Display list. For example, you can change the value from Center to Tile.
3. Click the Apply button.
4. Change the wallpaper display style back to your desired setting.
5. Click the OK button on the Display Properties dialog box. You can expect the desktop to display correctly.

Alternate Workaround

Turn off Active Desktop to prevent this issue from occuring every time you exit the game.

Note: Turning off (disabling) Active Desktop prevents you from using some of the desktop wallpaper files that are supplied by Microsoft. Specifically, any JPEG (.jpg) wallpaper files are not displayed when Active Desktop is not turned on. You are limited to bitmap (.bmp) wallpapers only.

To turn off Active Desktop, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the desktop. A shortcut menu appears.
2. Select the Active Desktop menu item.
3. Click to uncheck the Show Web Content menu item.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article.