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Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

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Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#41

Post by seabass-labrax »

gulikoza wrote: post #24
PlunderBunny wrote: post #8

Hands up all the people that used computers before desktop pictures were a thing and still set the desktop to a solid colour because “it will draw faster and use less memory.”

Windows before some version (maybe before XP?) only supported BMP wallpapers. BMP is uncompressed, a 1024x768 24-bit BMP is 2.25MB. That could be 7% of the 32MB system RAM and if the image got paged out - you were looking at it being redrawn line by line...yeah, I'm not doing that :)

It might have been NT that added support: I used Windows XP Service Pack 3 extensively, and by that time Windows supported JPEG pictures as desktop backgrounds. That is, JPG pictures in Windows-speak ;)

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#42

Post by Lammy »

gulikoza wrote: post #24
PlunderBunny wrote: post #8

Hands up all the people that used computers before desktop pictures were a thing and still set the desktop to a solid colour because “it will draw faster and use less memory.”

Windows before some version (maybe before XP?) only supported BMP wallpapers. BMP is uncompressed, a 1024x768 24-bit BMP is 2.25MB. That could be 7% of the 32MB system RAM and if the image got paged out - you were looking at it being redrawn line by line...yeah, I'm not doing that :)

My recollection is Windows 98 popping up a box like “Click yes to enable Active Desktop to do this” when I had AD disabled and tried to set a JPEG wallpaper. That would imply SHELL32 >= 4.7 https://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/shell/shell32/...

Wikipedia sez “Since Windows XP, if a non-BMP image is used as Windows Desktop wallpaper, Windows will convert non-BMP image to BMP image in background.” and Group Policy has some relevant options:

“Enable Active Desktop” (“ForceActiveDesktopOn”) https://admx.help/?Category=Windows_11_2022&Policy=Microsoft... has the description “Allows HTML and JPEG Wallpaper”.

Also “Allow only bitmapped wallpaper” (“NoHTMLPaper”) option: https://admx.help/?Category=Windows_11_2022&Policy=Microsoft...

“If users select files with other image formats, such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, or HTML, through the Browse button on the Desktop tab, the wallpaper does not load. Files that are autoconverted to a .bmp format, such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG, can be set as Wallpaper by right-clicking the image and selecting "Set as Wallpaper".”

Both “Supported on: Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 only”.

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#43

Post by EvanAnderson »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #8

Hands up all the people that used computers before desktop pictures were a thing and still set the desktop to a solid colour because “it will draw faster and use less memory.”

Sort of. I set solid colors on Windows machines because I'm frequently connecting to them over low bandwidth, high latency links using RDP. Pictures are slow even with bitmap caching (though my pure and refined hatred is saved for apps and websites that do "fade" and animation effects in the UI, particularly native apps that ignore the OS settings for these "features").

The decision to set the .DEFAULT profile wallpaper (the desktop that appears behind the logon UI) to a photo for Server (2016) still irks me. Sure-- set that on the desktop OS, but servers don't need pretty pictures by default. (This decision is emblematic of the "children are running the pre-school" mentality that seems to be pervasive at MSFT now.)

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#45

Post by omoikane »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #8

Hands up all the people that used computers before desktop pictures were a thing and still set the desktop to a solid colour because “it will draw faster and use less memory.”

I still use a solid black background. I rarely see my background anyways.

I do have a picture for my login screen though.

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#46

Post by tom_ »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #29
gulikoza wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows before some version (maybe before XP?) only supported BMP wallpapers. BMP is uncompressed, a 1024x768 24-bit BMP is 2.25MB. That could be 7% of the 32MB system RAM and if the image got paged out - you were looking at it being redrawn line by line...yeah, I'm not doing that :)

I mean, you have to uncompress an image to display it anyway, so it would've made no difference.

But the uncompressed data doesn't need to stick around. It could be uncompressed piece by piece into a much smaller temp buffer, with the revealed parts of the areas of interest copied into video RAM as necessary.

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#48

Post by dijit »

yial wrote: post #26
LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

This reminds me of how in Windows 95, installers would complete quicker if you constantly moved the mouse, but would take longer if it was still.

I had an issue like this once installing windows 2000. If you didn’t move the mouse during the installation, it would hang and fail. Finally got it to install by sitting there moving the mouse.

Wow, I had that exact same issue before.

I wonder what the cause is/was.

I'm aware that old PS/2 connectors would interrupt, vs being polled like USB.

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#49

Post by kevingadd »

_nalply wrote: post #34
ClassyJacket wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you have to uncompress an image to display it anyway, so it would've made no difference.

This assumes that memory for the system and the graphics card is shared.

Yeah, Windows in this era already had the concept of bitmaps in system memory and bitmaps in device memory, so the desktop background could have been decompressed into GPU memory and then thrown away to free up CPU-side RAM. Not sure whether it would actually do that though.

Re: Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color

#50

Post by [deleted] »

mystified5016 wrote: post #30
quesomaster9000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if their site loaded a WASM-compiled remote-desktop viewer to interact with 'Edge in the cloud' just to view the page you want.

Edge your users by bringing Microsoft Edge to edge devices with Edge Cloud edge Edition Advantage! E: 365

[deleted]
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