1. Open the Control Panel
2. Click System
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Click Settings in the Performance section
5. Check the “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop” checkbox
6. Click OK until you close the windows

Also,

Right click somewhere on an empty part of the desktop. Click on “Arrange Icons By” and turn “Lock Web Items on Desktop” off. If you leave them items locked, the background stays there.

Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio devices

Click the ’sounds’ tab. In the window, scroll down to ‘Windows Explorer’ and in the sub menu, highlight ‘Start navigation’

Pull down the drop down box below, where it currently says ‘Start’ or ‘Windows Start’ and choose ‘(none)’ instead. Click ‘Apply’, then click OK, and close the Control Panel.

No more clicking.

You can uncompress all the files on a Hard Drive from the command line. Open a command prompt and from the root of the drive or the root of the folder you want to decompress type the following.

compact /u /s /a /q /i

Press the Win + U keys together to launch the Ease of Access Center.

Then click on “Use the Computer without a mouse or keyboard” (most probably the 3rd option in the list).

Then on next page uncheck the box which says “Use On-Screen Keyboard“.

Click Save button.

If the fix suggestions that Windows Update provides you for the error do not work try the following:

1) Open an elevated Command Prompt window – click the Vista Orb (Start button), type command prompt, right click the Command Prompt shortcut in the Program list and select Run As Administrator.

2) To display the current proxy setting of Windows Update, execute this command:
netsh winhttp show proxy

3) If the proxy server is shown in the “show proxy” result, then execute this command to disable the Windows Update proxy setting:
netsh winhttp reset proxy