wngai@net1.ics.uci.edu (Wayne Ngai) (01/31/91)
Hi, recently I have obtain some 640x480x256 bmps. I have a Paradise VGA 16 bit card and the Paradise VGA video driver install. Anyway, I try loading them to the sceen but it keep saying that the bmp picture can't be used on the desktop. So, I change the win.ini file to initialize the wallpaper to the one of the bmp. It work, but However, it splitted the picture in half with the bottom half on the top of the screen and the top half on the middle of the screen. I changed the display from center to tile and it still does the same thing! I change it back and still no effect. Can someone out there please enlighten me as to why this happens? Thanks in Advance! Wayne wngai@paris.ics.uci.edu
daly@ecs.umass.edu (Bryon Daly, ECE dept, UMass, Amherst) (01/31/91)
In article <27A74E6A.28230@ics.uci.edu>, wngai@net1.ics.uci.edu (Wayne Ngai) writes: > Hi, recently I have obtain some 640x480x256 bmps. I have a Paradise > VGA 16 bit card and the Paradise VGA video driver install. Anyway, I try > loading them to the sceen but it keep saying that the bmp picture can't > be used on the desktop. So, I change the win.ini file to initialize the > wallpaper to the one of the bmp. It work, but However, it splitted the > picture in half with the bottom half on the top of the screen and the > top half on the middle of the screen. I changed the display from center > to tile and it still does the same thing! I change it back and still no > effect. Can someone out there please enlighten me as to why this happens? I had the same problem a while back with my old computer. Let me guess: You only have 1 MB on RAM in your system? It seems that Windows doesn't do a very good job of handling low memory ( total memory <= 1MB ) situations (at least on a 286 in standard mode, it does). Most of the time, the informative "Can't be used as wallpaper" message means that you don't have enough memory to hold that picture as wallpaper. If you have it loaded in from the the win.ini, it is loaded in first, before other programs take the available memory away, but there is apparently some bug that does not like to crowd the bmp into such a small memory area, causing the split picture you see. When wallpaper is loaded in, it uses system RAM to store the picture, and a 640x480x256 bmp takes up over 300K. I used to get the same problem loading in an 800x600x16 bmp (if it loaded in at all) on my 286 with 1 MB RAM. I don't know of any way to fix this short of adding more memory to your system. (I solved the problem by buying a 386 w/4MB :-) Good luck, Bryon Daly daly@ecs.umass.edu