Here’s how to visit the iconic hill in the Windows XP background

Yes, it’s real. The CGI-looking hilltop that graced your screen when you turned on Windows XP back in the day is a real location and one you can visit. Windows XP is no longer supported in Microsoft's world today. The company is now pushing its users to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, which offers a variety of new features. Does it look like the oversaturated blue & green landscape you saw when you opened your laptop all those years ago? Let’s take a look. Cue the Windows XP music! 🎵

How Bliss Hill got to your XP desktop

National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear drove by Bliss Hill hundreds of times when he visited his girlfriend every Friday night. He would drive past it on the journey from St. Helena to Marin. “I always had a camera with me”, he recalled. O’Rear spent over twenty-five years shooting photography professionally, and two of his photographs made it on the cover of National Geographic while he took pictures for them. However, his iconic shot of Bliss Hill would eclipse his career at the prestigious wildlife magazine.

One day in January 1996, on his way to see his then-girlfriend, now his wife, O’Rear pulled over and snapped Bliss Hill. He took it on a Mamiya RZ67 with Fuji Velvia film, a film type known for its luxurious colors. He used a tripod to capture the shot. The photo turned out perfectly, and O’Rear snapped four shots in a sequence. After digitizing the image 90s style, he then uploaded the image to two stock photo websites: one he co-founded, and another frequently used by Microsoft, Corbis. O’Rear uploaded the photos in 1996 but ended up getting his break from Microsoft in 2000.

Stock footage to Windows XP background

Apparently, Bill Gates or someone at his company saw the photo and fell in love with it. They paid Charles O’Rear a nice little sum – reportedly in the low six-figures – to use the photo. O’Rear can’t say the exact sum thanks to a non-disclosure agreement he signed back then. After he signed the rights away, his pic got to be the Windows XP background and part of a billion-dollar marketing campaign for Microsoft.

While no one knows exactly who came across the now-famous background, Bill Gates himself was reportedly looking for a simple image he could use as a background for Windows XP. Rather than use a simple blue or beige background, Gates reportedly wanted to change backgrounds up with an actual picture. Also, because Microsoft really, really wanted the Bliss Hill picture for their Windows XP background, they paid O’Rear to fly the actual photograph personally from California to their headquarters in Seattle.

With Windows XP being a popular operating system, estimates put the number of eyes on this iconic background at roughly 1 billion. That means roughly 1/7th of the world has seen Bliss Hill without knowing where it was, what it was, or that it was a real place. Rights were acquired around 2000, and XP sold hundreds of millions of copies.

“Fake photo”

Charles O’Rear said: “A majority of people who saw that photograph, billions of people, thought it was not a real photograph.” Understandable. The colors are incredibly saturated. The blue sky looks so bright and the clouds are so fluffy, how could it be real?

Indeed, conspiracy theories abounded about the photo. “What is so blissful about bliss?” YouTuber Pseudiom asked in his video debunking the conspiracies surrounding the Windows XP background. Believe it or not, the photo was taken in January after a storm! “After winter storms in California, the grass looks particularly green”, Pseudiom explained in his video. Microsoft cropped the image to fit standard desktops at the time and edited the green to make it pop more. While those were the only edits reportedly done to the Windows XP background photo, other edits were rumored to be thrown into the photo, including subliminal messages. Apart from stated rumors that the clouds & mountains are fake, some people believe something is hidden in the grey shrubby area. Taken after January storm, only cropping and green saturation adjustments by Microsoft were applied.

Bliss Hill now

Bliss Hill still exists, and it’s still a beautiful, green hill. Being in or around Napa, however, it’s often covered in wooden posts & twine to grow grapes for, what else, wine. The little dirt road with a pull-off where O’Rear stopped twenty-five years ago is also gone, replaced by a bustling highway. Coordinates approximately 38.249069, -122.410126 along Highway 121 mark the spot. Typically vineyard-covered but occasionally matches original after rains, the dirt pull-off replaced by highway means visitors need to plan their stop carefully.

Microsoft's ongoing use of Bliss

Microsoft has kept returning to the image long after Windows XP left the scene. A modified version appeared as a Microsoft Teams background in July 2021. A 4K rendering followed in June 2023 on the Microsoft Design site. In November 2023 the company released a limited-edition holiday sweater, directing proceeds to The Nature Conservancy. Limited-edition Crocs dropped in August 2025. These revivals show how the photograph still carries brand weight two decades later.

Charles O'Rear's later life and retirement

After the Windows XP era, O’Rear kept shooting for years before stepping back. He and his wife moved to Brevard, North Carolina in 2017. He retired by 2020. In September 2023 a local paper named him Transylvanian of the Week, a small-town nod to the man whose roadside snapshot became one of the most reproduced images on earth.

Best time to photograph Bliss Hill today

The hill rarely appears without vines or dead grass these days. February 2026 visitor reports captured a near-identical view after heavy rains cleared the vineyard lines. The greenest conditions still follow winter storms, just as they did when O’Rear stopped in January 1996. Travelers hoping for the original look should aim for late winter after storms and check recent photos before making the drive.

Bliss in popular culture and nostalgia

The image ranks among the most viewed photographs ever taken. Social media fills with fresh attempts to recreate the shot each year. March 2026 brought 30th-anniversary coverage that paired the original wallpaper with current visitor images. Pilgrimages continue, and the hill keeps turning up in memes, desktop recreations, and quiet nods to the era when a single landscape defined a billion screens.