Sue,
It's the .Default Desktop Wallpaper, that displays for just a
couple of seconds before Windows draws the Welcome screen.
To set the .Default wallpaper, so it will show for about 2 seconds like
a splash screen, you can either do it manually in the registry thus :
Open regedit.exe (by typing the same into the "Run" box) and navigate to
the following key :
HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop
....then, under this key find the value called "Wallpaper" and change it
to whatever the full path is to your desired splash-screen image.
Also, while you're there, you can also set the value just below this
called "WallpaperStyle" to 2 (so that any image will be "stretched" to
fit the screen).
Reboot your machine to see the "splash screen" effect.
Alternatively, you can 'copy and paste' the following commands ether
into the "Run" box on the 'Start Menu' or into a 'Command Prompt'
(dos-box) window replacing the "C:\Windows\Whatever.jpg" with your image
file :
reg ADD "HKU\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Wallpaper /d
C:\Windows\Whatever.jpg /f
reg ADD "HKU\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop" /v WallpaperStyle /d 2 /f
(The above two commands should both be one-liners but may not appear so
due to line-wrap. Please ensure that both commands begin with 'reg' and
end with '/f')
Entering these two commands does the same as setting the registry
manually, it's just a bit quicker is all.
Similarly, reboot to see the splash-screen effect, just before the
Welcome screen appears.
*Note - Please exercise care when editing the registry, always create a
backup and / or create a 'System Restore' point first.
==
Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.