>How do I put a small graphic image as the screen background instead of just the top level menu and a white screen.?

Using teh Picture property like Matthew suggested tiles the image. If thats not what you want, you do somethign like:

_screen.addobject('imgLogo', 'image')
_screen.imgLogo.Picture = 'logo.bmp'
_screen.imgLogo.Top = _screen.height / 2 - _screen.imgLogo.Top / 2
_screen.imgLogo.left = _screen.width / 2 - _screen.imgLogo.left / 2
_screen.imgLogo.Visible = .t.

Also, if you want to display just your top level form and not the back white ground, you can put: SCREEN = OFF in your config.fpw

>Can I make it a file from the local directory so I can have differnt backgrounds depending on what directory the exe is being run in?

Sure