Windows 7: Windows 7 animation

Hello,

I have an ASUS P5E-VM HDMI mobo and running Windows 7 Professional. The mobo has a VGA and HDMI and dual monitor capabilities. I have my computer monitor on VGA and my TV on HDMI. When I have both monitor and TV connected, I lose the Windows 7 startup animation. It uses the Vista animation instead. When I have just the computer monitor alone, on VGA or HDMI, the Windows 7 animation comes back. How can I make the Windows 7 be used even if both monitor and TV are connected? I know it's a small thing but I like that animation.

Sounds weird. With my computer when booting with a TV plugged in, the second screen gets a signal, but remains blank. I know other people have complained about getting the Vista load screen instead of 7's do to weird configurations. I'll look around and post back later. Let us know if you find anything in the mean time.

Found some interesting stuff so far. I might be misreading your post so I'll ask, have you tried using just the TV and not the monitor? It sounded like you were saying you either tried just the monitor or both.

No I haven't but I'm trying to get it to work while they're both on.

The actual animation you get is dependent on the resolution of the screen involved - if the screen's native resolution is not one of the "allowed" settings it will revert to the Vista animation

For example I never see the Windows 7 animation on my netbook but see it on my desktop and on various laptops

How does that apply to my situation? My monitor resolution is 1680x1050 which must be adequate because I get the animation when it is only the monitor connected. My TV resolution is much higher (but can't remember it right now).

The way I understand this to work is that it is not case of only the low resolutions having this issue but if a particular resolution is not on the List then the animation will not work. This subject is complicated by the fact that there are two parts to resolution, DPI & Aspect ratio. TV screens tend to have a different aspect ratio to computer screens as broadcast standards differ to those traditional in the IT field.

A pc "widescreen" monitor is not likely to have a 16:9 ratio which would be standard on a TV, if for example you have a 4:3 input to a Widescreen TV and set it to display at 16:9 you will see a distorted picture. In the case of the start-up graphic if this type of thing happens for an unsupported aspect ratio / resolution then the software will fail and "fallback" to the Vista style animation.

The actual Windows 7 graphic is generated, by a fairly basic software routine, rather than use an image file which is why you do not just see a distorted image.

This is of course only my understanding of matters and there may well be other causes in your particular case

Widescreen PC monitors are generally 16x10

ie 1050 div by 105 =10
1680 " " 105 =16.

So any way around it?

Unfortunately I do not know of any way to resolve this particular reason for the Vista animation appearing, anything that I have read from MS during the Windows 7 development, has always ended with the "This is by design - will not be fixed" answer

There is another cause of this, for which, the solution has been well documented, both here and at other sites, but as our animation works with one display and not the other I do not believe this is the cause, in your case

For reference this fix is ....
Run an administrator command prompt and enter (without the quotes)
"bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us"

As an alternative There is this application which may allow you to get something more appropriate for your system - I've not checked this out so cannot state that it will work but maybe worth a try

Change Windows 7 Boot Animation with Boot BMP Changer