I tried to use one of my snapshots as my desktop background. Now my desktop is black and while I can see icons, I can't see anything else and am unable to get to the control panel to change it back. I tried starting in safe mode, but got some kind of error message (I could see the warning sign, but can't read the message.) I have a Display shortcut on my desktop, but when I open it, everything is black. I am able to get into my computer via the back-up administrator, but of course have no access to any of the documents that I need. My System Restore has not worked for a long time, so that option is out. Any ideas how I can fix this?

To open control panel, at the desktop press ctrl,alt, delete to bring up task manager>applications tab>new task>type in "cmd" with out the quotes>ok>at the blinking cursor on the black screen type"control" without the quotes>enter.

Now I am able to open the control panel, but when I open the display icon, the menu is solid black and unreadable. And I am not sure what I did to make it this way. Also, I was able to start in safe mode, but with the same results. All menus are solid black: folders, bookmarks, taskbar etc. And my desktop has the wallpaper in the center, with a very wide black border.

Thanks Jabuck for your help. It's fixed! For anyone who is unfortunate enough to do what I did, here's what happened. When I was in the control panel, under display & appearance advanced tab, somehow I changed the "windows" colors to black for both the background and text. I figured out what happened by logging in to my back up adminstrator account and trying to duplicate the error until I found what the problem was. Then I went back and did a screen print of the advanced appearance window to use as a guide when I logged back on as me. I needed that because that window was black and I used the print to guide my clicks until I got it right.