Windows 7 & Desktop Wallpaper Auto Change

bobbyt

bobbyt

Hunter
I just upgraded to Parallels 5 & created a clean install of Windows 7 to go with it.

I'm noticing that my desktop picture appears to be 'removed' when i switch out of full screen or enable and disable view of the desktop.

The thing is, I configured the VM with the same desktop wallpaper (minus space for the menu bar) which creates a more realistic aero effect. The transparancy shows my desktop as one would expect, and it blends seemlessly with my mac desktop...

However, the auto removal of the desktop picture when the windows desktop is hidden is forcing me to manually re-enable the desktop image to get the seemless effect. Is there a method to prevent Parallels from touching my windows desktop???
 
I've also noticed it happened after leaving my system idle for an extended period (long enough for the screen shutoff on idle to occur)...

It seems to be repeatedly reverting to a 'solid color' choice in light blue. I even tried changing my solid color to something different, but it always seems to go back to the light blue...
 
Since there aren't any responses, I'm assuming nobody really cares about this 'feature'. The irony is that this trick, most likely implemented by a developer because they realized they could (without bothering to concern themselves why they should). As implemented in parallels, it seemingly makes the fact parallels supports Aero pretty much meaningless...

To demonstrate this is 100% reproducible, I put together a few images. I set my windows 7 desktop to a cropped version of my mac desktop. By cropping the top 12 pixels off my mac desktop, the windows desktop ends up lining up perfectly with my mac desktop. Areo ends up looking very nice in this regard. In the below image, the area to the right and top of the window are part of my mac desktop. The corner and transparency of the windows window in this case gives a strong appearance of a single environment.

demo1.gif


Next, if I click the patch to the far right of the Windows 7 taskbar, the Windows desktop is shown, when I click it again, the windows desktop is hidden:

demo2.gif


100% of the time after doing this, my windows desktop is then forced to change into a solid blue color, as shown in the following image. Again, the are to the top and right of the image is my Mac desktop, however the corner and transparent background of the windows window now displays the hard coded blue color:

demo3.gif


If you click the desktop button again, Parallels then will revert your desktop picture back to whatever you have previously defined it as. However, there is a bit of a delay as the parallels software has to intervene to re-enable your desktop picture for the duration the windows desktop is shown. Parallels has implemented this feature to essentially attempt to force this blue swatch every time the windows desktop is hidden under coherence.

What seems most odd is the fact that this doesn't appear to speed the UI up in any manner that I notice. It truly appears this 'feature' was written in not because it should be there, but only because someone realized they could write it. This leaves me shaking my head every time I have to go back into my control panel to re-select my desktop so I can get a clean UI. That is until the next time I either reveal my desktop, reboot, or leave my computer idle for an extended period.
 
Ditto. I saw the same issue with Vista prior to my upgrade to Windows 7. It is annoying that it keeps reverting back to a solid backgroud. It completely defeats the purpose of eye candy (aka aero) support.
 
Unfortunately as far as I can tell Parallels invests all their time into trying to come up with new 'features' that they can use to leverage paid upgrades, while countless bugs go completely ignored for literally years and versions on end...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top