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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

#61

Post by crummy »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #56
theandrewbailey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 98 introduced Active Desktop, allowing you to use JPG wallpapers. In my experience, enabling Active Desktop would make everything slower, so I always opted to take the RAM hit on BMP wallpapers. It was even better if I could save the BMP in 8-bit and still have it look good.

Yep. It's because Active Desktop was essentially running an instance of Internet Explorer rendering to your desktop, of course it's slow and memory intensive. Disabling Active Desktop and the fancy views on the left pane of Windows Explorer made Windows 98 change from quite slow to super responsive.

Didn't Active Desktop let you set a webpage as your wallpaper?

Crazy times.

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

#62

Post by dunham »

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 always used a solid background in X (usually slate gray) to save memory. I've continued to do that in general, but happen to have a Monument Valley background on one of my laptops at the moment.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

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 :)

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by t8sr »

bokohut wrote: post #58
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.”

As it relates to the real world from this issue, it was a life and death situation for law enforcement. In 2011 I was contacted and engaged as an expert consultant by a mobile radio deployment company which was working on a federal government funded program to update the mobile law enforcement vehicles technology operations within the State of Pennsylvania. There was a technology problem no one else could solve even…

I mean this in the nicest way possible: this paragraph, with all the repetition and constant use of the word "expert", is completely unhinged. I really recommend re-reading what you write.

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

#65

Post by numpad0 »

_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.

Or, that desktop rendering is not GPU accelerated.

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

#66

Post by dankwizard »

t8sr wrote: post #64
bokohut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it relates to the real world from this issue, it was a life and death situation for law enforcement. In 2011 I was contacted and engaged as an expert consultant by a mobile radio deployment company which was working on a federal government funded program to update the mobile law enforcement vehicles technology operations within the State of Pennsylvania. There was a technology problem no one else could solve even…

I mean this in the nicest way possible: this paragraph, with all the repetition and constant use of the word "expert", is completely unhinged. I really recommend re-reading what you write.

(It's a bot)

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

#67

Post by Covzire »

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 :)

The first tech support call to a PC manufacturer I remember from the 90's was because of this. Was playing around on the 486 in our family room and set a high color wallpaper on windows 3.11. Took forever to boot and we didn't know why.

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

#68

Post by evanjrowley »

t8sr wrote: post #64
bokohut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it relates to the real world from this issue, it was a life and death situation for law enforcement. In 2011 I was contacted and engaged as an expert consultant by a mobile radio deployment company which was working on a federal government funded program to update the mobile law enforcement vehicles technology operations within the State of Pennsylvania. There was a technology problem no one else could solve even…

I mean this in the nicest way possible: this paragraph, with all the repetition and constant use of the word "expert", is completely unhinged. I really recommend re-reading what you write.

The term expert is used frequently in US government settings, per the US Office of Personnel Management: https://www.opm.gov/frequently-asked-questions/assessment-po...

Anyone above the lowest pay grades gets categorized as some type of "expert". As the gov tries to justify higher pay to keep up with inflation and compete with private job markets, more people become categorized as "experts" to fill higher pay grades. (For perspective, you can't afford to live independently in the DC metro area unless you're in the top 1/3 of pay grades) I can totally see how someone throwing the term around could appear unhinged to an outsider, but the reality is that the US government as a whole lives in it's own unhinged little world.

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

#69

Post by gloflo »

t8sr wrote: post #64
bokohut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it relates to the real world from this issue, it was a life and death situation for law enforcement. In 2011 I was contacted and engaged as an expert consultant by a mobile radio deployment company which was working on a federal government funded program to update the mobile law enforcement vehicles technology operations within the State of Pennsylvania. There was a technology problem no one else could solve even…

I mean this in the nicest way possible: this paragraph, with all the repetition and constant use of the word "expert", is completely unhinged. I really recommend re-reading what you write.

I am not OP and I see nothing of the sort you are implicating. The writing is dry humor and funny. The expert repetition of the word "expert" for the obvious non-expert expert delivers a good bit of the story.

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

#70

Post by Cpoll »

t8sr wrote: post #64
bokohut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it relates to the real world from this issue, it was a life and death situation for law enforcement. In 2011 I was contacted and engaged as an expert consultant by a mobile radio deployment company which was working on a federal government funded program to update the mobile law enforcement vehicles technology operations within the State of Pennsylvania. There was a technology problem no one else could solve even…

I mean this in the nicest way possible: this paragraph, with all the repetition and constant use of the word "expert", is completely unhinged. I really recommend re-reading what you write.

It's a bit dramatic, but "unhinged" is excessive. I imagine the repetition is a stylistic choice. It builds up the conclusion, and turns a one-line anecdote into a story.
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