Windows 7 would take a long time to load with a solid background. Now we know

Windows 7 was released in 2009, and it helped Microsoft recover from the frustrating failures of Windows Vista. Windows 7 wasn’t without faults as this curious tale proves.

Some users experienced a frustrating problem: If they set a monochrome image as the background of their Windows 7 PC, it would take 30 seconds for the operating system to launch and switch from the Welcome Screen to the Desktop.

A recent Raymond Chen, a Microsoft veteran, explains this in his blog post. According to Raymond Chen, a simple error in programming meant that users were forced to wait longer to boot the system. Windows 7 sets up the desktop in pieces after logging in. The taskbar, desktop window, application icons, and background image are all displayed.

It waited patiently until all components were loaded and received feedback for each component. If it did not receive any feedback, it would switch from the welcome screen to desktop after 30 seconds.

Here’s the problem: In the background bitmap code was the code for the message stating that the background is ready. This means that if the background bitmap was not present, the message would never appear. A single color is not a bitmap.

As a result: The logon system waited for the message to say that the background had finished loading in vain, so Windows 7 did not start until the 30-second fallback was activated and sent the users to the desktop.

This problem could also happen if users activated the group policy “Hide desktop icon”. This was because the policies were added only after the main code was written and called using an If statement. Windows 7 was initially unable to recognize this and took longer to load.

Chen uses the following code snippet to illustrate the issue:

// Original codeInitialiseDesktopIcons(){    bind to the desktop folder    enumerate the icons    add them to the screen    Report(DesktopIconsReady);}// Updated with group policy supportInitialiseDesktopIcons(){    if (desktop icons allowed by policy)    {         bind to the desktop folder        enumerate the icons        add them to the screen        Report(DesktopIconsReady);    } }

Unsolved since months

According to Chen it took Microsoft several months to recognize the issue. It was fixed in November 2009 by an update. The problem has not occurred since. This is a good example of the many errors that can occur when programming.

Further Reading: A Janet Jackson song that crashed laptops for nine years

Laura Pippig, Staff Writer at PC-WELT,