desktop bmp stops displaying

This just started happening a few weeks ago on my win98 machine (not SE).
It has a usb installed just for your info.

When the bootup process starts and first shows the desktop and asks for
the password, the bmp (a family photo) shows fine. Then after logging in,
the icons are displayed on a off-white background (bmp no longer displays).

It seems to be running a little slower too.

I've checked msconfig>startup and autoexec.bat and nothing looks out of place. I've run AVG, sysbot and adaware and nothing is shown other than a few non-critical things in adaware that I delete (or whatever adaware does with it).

Any ideas ? Thanks
oh, I've also tried switching the bmp's to another bmp for the desktop in control panel>display to no avail.

 

I figured out what it was though I dont really understand why.

I had set the advanced controls in ie to not display pictures on browsing
to increase page display speed (have dsl on XP but dial-up on this win98).

I changed it back to show pictures and rebooted and the bmp again shows.

Now it still goes to a blank screen (well like it did before) and displays the
icons but then the bmp displays and it redisplays the desktop icons.

it's still slower than it used to be and I have done a defrag.

 

If the bmp is large and complex, it will take a lot of graphics resources to display it. This will also depend on the graphics adapter that you have.

I suggest you get Irfanview
http://www.irfanview.com/

Using IrfanView, you can "crop" the image down to the main elements. You can change the resolution (zoom) so that it is not quite as detailed.

If you have the colour settings high (True Colour - 32 bit), this will also use a lot of resources. I find High Colour - 16 bit is adequate, unless a program asks to run at 32 bit colour.

I have had problems with "Active Desktop ", so I disable it. If you have a bmp for the background, you should not need Active Desktop.

Matt