WinPE5 background image on UEFI

[Tripredacus]

A question came up about the background image in the Win8x PEs v4 and 5. In previous versions it was just a wallpaper type design but in PE4/5 it is a blue square that is either set to tile or stretch. Has anyone done any testing with getting a custom image to display and display properly?

 

With PE4+ we can do a UEFI boot. Any PC that has GOP capable video will do automatic scaling of the display resolution which causes a headache for getting static background images to look correct. Even in the Gimagex HTA, the HTA background doesn't conform to the HTA itself on widescreen displays when booted UEFI.

 

I did a small test to see if it was indeed no longer possible, as an MSFT CSG stated on Technet. Well it is definately possible! I only did the UEFI test so far and at least in that mode I believe it uses a "stretch" mode for the winpe.jpg. Here are those results:

 

 

The original image ix 357x500 and it looks like the PE is designed to only accept a square image. It stretched it to the screen width but did a proportional resize. The top and bottom of the image are outside the boundaries of the screen.

 

This is a different cat playing a trumpet image than what I used in my BGRT testing

EDIT: I did a legacy test. It seems that using a square image would be best. I minimized the cmd window so I wouldn't have to edit out the connection strings.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Tripredacus

[Tripredacus]

I was looking at this again and found some interesting things. My original idea that a square image being required seems to not be correct. I found a curious thing.

On 16:9 displays the vertical resolution of the winpe.jpg is (approx) 270px. I used an image with shapes to determine this size. Then I checked with the cat image from above, and yep 270px again. I'm eyeballing what is actually displayed vs the original image with a marquee tool. So I have 2 different source images, with one having multiple resizes, that are showing the same height.

It would also appear that either the horizontal doesn't matter, or that if the horizontal is less than x size then it will stretch.

If you look at the 2 images above, I did 2 tests.

Legacy boot on 16:9 display

UEFI boot on 4:3 display

The 4:3 you can see more on the vertical, closer to 290px.

WinPE's winpe.jpg seems to fit nicely in 480x270, which is also the resolution of the Sony PSP.