While in yahoo news page I downloaded a jpg image to desktop. I wanted to drag and drop image to an email to my wife at work. Now not only can I not send it to my wife, but I cannot even find the file on my hard drive to delete it. Any suggestions?

search for *.jpg and see what you find. Chenage folder options to show complete path.

a search for *.jpg finds nothing. the Element Properties dialog box for this image shows the image location to be: http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/ 20041222/t/r2252492317.jpg The same dialog box shows the link properties address to be: story&u=/041222/ids_photos_wl/r2252492317.jpg An hour or two ago when I did a search for the specific file: r2252492317 it found this jpg file but its size was "0 bytes". I deleted it anyway. It now sits in my Recycle bin, but the image is still on the desktop. right clicking on the image itself, on the desktop, produces the Arrange Icons dialog box. I ran "regedit" HKEY_CURRENT-USER/Control Panel/Desktop. Inside the Desktop folder is a folder called Window Metrics. I don't know if this folder is associated with the 3"x4" image on the desktop screen or not or if one of the files in this folder is involved. Right clicking on any of the files in the Window Metrics folder produces a menu with the choices: Modify, Modify Binary Data, Delete, Rename Just so you know, the offending desktop image is not pinned to the desktop background I am using; a change of background image still leaves the offending 3"x4" image on the desktop. Also, I cannot click and drag the offending image either.

Did you try rebooting?

yes, i rebooted. same result, image still on desktop

Try right click> general> and see if the properties of the icon are read only.

in following your advice i discovered something i had not seen before. while i had moved the mouse prompt all around the 3"x4" image i had never noticed a small tool bar at the top which would appear when the prompt was placed along the top border of the image. clicking on the down arrow at the upper left corner produced a dialog box titled: Desktop Items. Clicking on the Web tab I was able to delete the address of the offending image. I was then able to click on the X on the upper right of the image and turn it off. Thanks for your help