alternate desktop?

for some reason, i think i have an alternate desktop.
the only thing on my visible desktop is the harddrive icon.
on my alternate desktop i have an image and a zip file. Whenever I tried to drag a picture from a website to my visible desktop, a Finder message pops up stating "This item can not be moved because 'Desktop' cannot be modified."

any ideas how to fix this?

nevermind, i repaired permissions, restarted the pb and it's fixed now. thanks anyway