[German]A little "story from the past of Windows": In Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), users had to experience that logging into their user account was very slow if a solid color was used for the desktop's background. After a long time, Microsoft developer Raymond Chen has come out of the closet and revealed the reason.
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Welcome screen is displayed for 30 seconds
Microsoft has published the support article The Welcome screen may be displayed for 30 seconds during the logon process after you set a solid color as the desktop background in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2, which is probably a few years old.
The message of this article: If the user sets a solid color as the desktop background in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the logon screen hangs for 30 seconds after entering the user password. Only then does the desktop appear in the display.
Later there was a hotfix update which fixed this problem. The whole issue has personally passed me by, although I usually work with a white desktop background.
Microsoft developer uncovers the details
Raymond Chen, a former developer at Microsoft, regularly publishes internal information from Windows development on his blog The Old New Thing. On April 28, 2025, Chen published the article Why did Windows 7, for a few months, log on slower if you have a solid color background?
In a nutshell: It was a simple programming error that led to this crude result. After the user logs in via the welcome page, Windows loads the so-called shell. This consists of the desktop, the taskbar and the start menu, which are provided by the Explorer process.
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During this process, the components responsible for the various system services are loaded and initialized. The desktop window is created and filled with icons. And the desktop background window loads the desktop background image and displays it on the screen.
The Windows logon screen waits for all these parts to be loaded and report that they are ready. Once this has happened or the waiting time of 30 seconds has elapsed, the login page disappears and the desktop is displayed.
This was implemented in such a way that the report that the desktop had finished loading took place in the routine for rendering a background image. However, if a solid color for desktop background was configured, the shell never executed this routine. The Windows logon therefore waited in vain for the completion message and only canceled the display after the maximum waiting time of 30 seconds and switched to the desktop.
Chen also mentions a second error that also led to the 30-second hang at Windows logon. The "Hide desktop icons" group policy for hiding the desktop icons had the same effect. It's always amazing what bugs were contained in Windows. This is also an indication of why Microsoft's Windows-as-a-Service approach has been a disaster since Windows 10 and now with Windows 11, and why it struggles with bugs every time it updates the functionality.
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