Plenty of rumors have spread as North Bay residents dealt with the flames of the Wine Country fires, from stories that Mexican drug cartels started the wildfires to the more subtle inference that certain famous wineries had succumbed to the blaze.

One of the more persuasive stories was a convincing photo comparison that claimed the notorious Microsoft XP "Bliss" hill — that serene blue-skied, grassy hill place of early-2000s desktop fame — had burned down in the North Bay fires.

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The images were shared on Imgur, Reddit and Twitter under the heading, "The 'Windows Hill' is on fire in California."

With how widespread the Nuns Fire actually became, it was sadly easy to accept that yet another Sonoma County landmark had burned down. However, Twitter sleuths stated that the hill was still intact, citing Cal Fire maps and GPS coordinates.

NBC Bay Area confirmed with a local and a Cal Fire spokeswoman that the hill had not burned down, while online site Gizmodo tracked down the location of the photo that depicted the burning hill in the comparison.

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That photo turned out to be of a vineyard about 4 miles away from the Windows XP hill, behind Gundlach Bundschu winery from Twitter user Kate Kisset.

The original Windows XP photo, named "Bliss," was shot in 1998 by National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, according to PC World. O'Rear was driving down Highway 12 and pulled off the road, taking just a couple shots of the brilliant green hill and blue sky before driving on.

O'Rear later uploaded it to stock photo site Corbis — notably owned at that time by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates — and he sold it to Microsoft for an undisclosed amount, the magazine reported. The image was eventually retired from Windows in 2014.

The photographer stated that many people suspected the image of being Photoshopped, including Microsoft's own staffers, who wrote O'Rear about the photo asking if it had been altered. He insists the image is real.