Message "preparing your desktop".

[Alan AZ]

This has shown up only within the last 2-3 days. After reading all the searches, all I did was do a restore. The default of 4 days, which displayed the recent windows update, seemed to be the culprit. Restarted with no apparent message as thread title. Keeping my fingers crossed. Good luck.

 

[boohbah]

what you saw was windows giving you a message that after an update it was preparing your desktop, fairly normal depending on the update,
from what you say you did a system restore to the point just before the update ,therefor no update therefor no message, i would hazard a guess that if you install the updates again you will see the preparing your desktop message again.
but i wouldnt worry about it.