Changing XP boot screen

[5614]

here's a good tutorial of how to change your XP (home or prof) boot screen, for those who dont know a boot screen is, you know why you turn on your computer it says windows XP with the logo? well that is the XP boot screen... now you can customise this screen by following a tutorial on this site:

http://www.thetechguide.com/howto/xpbootlogo/

 

it is intended for XP prof, although works fine with home (read it, it says!).

 

the program needed is resource hacker, a totaly safe, legal tool - i swear! and you will need something like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to make the image, you need one of these as you need to import the palet (again, read the site).

 

what i did was i downloaded Paint Shop Pro off the official site and used the free trial

 

all the downloads (resource hacker and the .pal files) are all safe, i found out by testing em myself!

 

please rememeber that the end image MUST be in 16 colour format, this is easy to set in Paint Shop Pro (i had version 9, the latest off the official site), the 16 colour format does however mean that it is effectively pointless to have images involved as they will be abismal quality.

 

it is all easy to do, just follow the manual.... any qyestions ask here!

[albertlee]

interesting, 5614

 

but how what is "resource hacker"??

 

I have seen its description: It can open *.res files, and windows module files, eg, DLL, EXE, etc...

 

What are res files??

 

By the way, since EXE is "already" compiled into machine code, how come it can be edited??

 

Albert

[Perennial]

I've been using Stardock's bootskin to do the same thing ... which is actually free btw if I remember correctly.

[5614]

if ya promise not to laugh at my basic design, i will show you what it looks like!

 

here is an image of me reprogramming the ntoskrnl.exe it is a system kernel i believe, this program can 'view' the windows kernel as its components, in the trees message table and version info is some of the programming data, however the majority of the data in this file is the images under the tree bitmaps, if YOU did it you would just see black squares, you must export the file (option within the program) take it into a shop, import the windows palete (available from the site i original linked ya all to) and then you can edit it, import it and save your new system file.

 

 

that stuff in the black box, melzack is my surname, JMM is my initials, XP home is the name of my OS!!! anyway, that is what i see at boot up.

[albertlee]

Can we change the boot screen by Registry???

 

isn't that part of the OS configuration setting??

 

Albert

[5614]

no its part of the ntoskrnl.exe MS kernel file.

 

and i made a wicked rainbow colour loading bar and removed the stupid box around it the rest of the boot up screen is similar to the one i posted above.

 

next explorer.exe will be attacked!

[Silencer]

Post that rainbow bar.

[5614]

Post that rainbow bar.

 

wow, its just a little paint job, by the time you remember that the XP boot screen uses its own palet and therefore screws up 'normal' colour and its 16-bit its really nothing special, just better than one colour!

 

if you edit explorer.exe there are thousands of things, if anyone knows the location of certain core upgradeable parts someone please tell me.

 

rainbow attached below, told ya, its tiny + nothing specail!

[neo007]

can the original boot screen be restored once it is changed?

[5614]

yes, you either replace it with a back up of the orignal file, or you update the file with the previous images which you would have had to back up or you can reinstall windows (without formatting).

 

either way i have backed up the images, backed up the file and can reinstal in ~20mins so its not much of a problem.