by LeoPanthera on 1/28/25, 7:31 PM
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.
by a2128 on 1/28/25, 9:56 PM
Over on the Linux side, I installed Vanilla OS recently and it has a Samba service (nmbd.service) as a bootup dependency, which waits for a non-loopback IPv4 interface to be available. So if you're on a laptop which is not connected to WiFi, it will just hang for 90 seconds on the bootup screen before systemd decides that service has failed to start and moves on
by PlunderBunny on 1/28/25, 8:21 PM
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.”
by scifi on 1/28/25, 9:40 PM
OK, but the article seems to focus on boot time and not performance afterward. During the netbook craze, it seemed like a big performance boost to remove a hi-res desktop in favor of a solid color. At least that's my recollection years later.
by thereisnospork on 1/28/25, 9:46 PM
Maybe it's been fixed in 11, but in windows 10 the automatic accent color option would lag the entire machine in order to pick a color. Which if you use the slideshow option can be quite frequent.
by butlike on 1/28/25, 8:11 PM
What was the name of that blog post from the old Windows dev? He had some interesting articles like how setting the datetime in the clock fubar'd older windows filesystem items or something?
by wavemode on 1/28/25, 9:59 PM
When I saw the title I assumed this would be a Raymond Chen article...
by robertlagrant on 1/28/25, 8:43 PM
I love that at the end there's a "How to set a solid color as the desktop background in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2" section.
by Melatonic on 1/30/25, 7:51 PM
I'm not sure why I do this still (there was an old reason - and it could be this boot time thing) but when I want a solid background in windows I always create a 1x1 pixel image of the colour I want (usually a very dark grey) and then set that as the background and tell windows to tile it.
This still produces a solid desktop background of course.
There are so many little quirks to windows and I've been using it so long I know there used to be a good reason to do this - vaguely I remember it being related to minimising RAM in something like windows 2000 or XP. Probably from the days when I was trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of hand me down parts to play some old game.
by bkummel on 1/28/25, 7:54 PM
This seems random and contra intuitive. The article is also confusing, containing a section on how to set a solid color as a background, while that is actually what causes the issue...
by kazinator on 1/29/25, 12:57 AM
What does the update do? Install a picture of young Bill Gates, throwing a floppy disc?
by quesomaster9000 on 1/28/25, 9:38 PM
Is it just me, or does the linked microsoft.com page hijack the back button?
by logicziller on 1/28/25, 10:07 PM
Mine is always solid black.
by supremepizza on 1/29/25, 8:24 AM
Isn't this article a bug from like 2009?
by zamadatix on 1/28/25, 10:09 PM
"Windows 7 boots slower if you set a solid background color" sounds like an interesting overlooked performance issue but it's really "(2009) Windows hotfix for 30 second delay during login".
by LorenDB on 1/28/25, 10:24 PM
(2009)
by anonymous1213 on 1/28/25, 11:07 PM
Haha