How do I fix these problems?

[MC Webster]

Ok, two simple little problems are driving me nuts. First, I enabled it on my laptop such that whenever I press control, it shows the location of the mouse pointer. But now I can't figure out how to turn this off. Where is the option to turn it off? I am working on a Dell I8200 with the touchpad drivers and logitech dual optical drivers installed.

Secondly, I recently decided I would set one of my digital camera pics as my desktop background. Well, when I did that, Windows decided it would add every picture in the "My Pictures" folder to the list of possible wallpapers in the display controls. How do I remove all these pics from the list of wallpapers?

Thanks in advance everyone!

 

[Feisters]

You should be able to deselect the Ctrl key - locate mouse pointer in the Mouse Properties in Control Panel. How did you enable it in the first place? Just go back to where you enabled it.

As to every one of your pictures being included as background choices, I don't know how that could have happened unless you selected them all. As far as removing them, that's probably in the registry somewhere. But I don't know.

 

[Buz2b]

In response to your second question I would respectively ask, "Why do you need to?" Just because they are there doesn't mean that they are taking up any space. If the multitude of options is bothering you just click on the "Customize Desktop" button. From there, at the bottom of the next window you will see "Desktop Cleanup". It is pretty self-explanatory from there but in essence, if you haven't used a desktop file in the last 60 days it will remove it to a "special folder" for you to clean up your options.

 

[earthman]

I have also noticed this behaviour with Windows where it adds all images to the wallpapers list. Annoying, but I don't think it hurts anything.
As for the mouse pointer problem, isn't that part of the options under "mouse" in Control Panel?

 

[JustinLerner]

I think XP adds any directory where your added image resides to the index of images available for wallpaper.

I might try the following, but since I'm not working on XP right now, I can't verify if this will work.
If you want to work around this, try making a new folder for your personal images, then move them there and temporarily delete the old folder (this may not work, since XP uses some sort of active, dynamic indexing).

If this doesn't work on the same HD and same partition, it might work by copying them to a different partition or HD. [I can't test this out since I'm not using XP right now.]

Then move any images for wallpapers to the directory you don't mind being indexed.

 

[MC Webster]

With regards to the mouse finder thing, I am trying to find where I turned it on, but I can't find it. It's like the option dissappeared. They are 14 tabs in the mouse control panel, and I can't find anything about the ctrl mouse finder option.

As for Windows adding all my pictures as desktop wallpapers, I have noticed that when I remove my pics from the "My Pictures" folder, the pictures are no longer shown as options for a wallpaper. Is there anyways I can move my pics back into this folder and not have them become wallpapers again? Perhaps there is a folder option I can set?

 

[JustinLerner]

Don't think it's possible. By default, the My Pictures directory indexes everything to include under wallpapers as well as the \winnt directory.

Possibly, if you create subdirectories under My Pictures and move the images you don't want indexed there you might work around this.