Create A Personalized
Boot Logo Screen
Two or three times a
week I get an e-mail asking if it's possible to modify the Windows
boot screen; the black screen that says Microsoft Home or
Professional and has the scrolling green or blue bars. There are
many sites that offer customized boot screens for download, but it's
unlikely you'll find one specifically tailored to your personal
situation. For the price of a couple of free downloads and some of
your time you can alter the default boot screen to reflect your
personal taste.
So there is no
confusion what this procedure accomplishes, I'm going to start off
with two images. The screen capture in Fig. 01 is well known by
anyone that has used Windows XP. In Fig. 02 you see the boot screen
that I modified for use on my home systems. The modified screen is
quite simple in this case, but you can make it as complex as you
desire during the editing phase.
Fig. 01
Fig. 02
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Warning
This procedure involves
modifying files essential to proper system operation.
While I have tested and used the procedures, there is
substantial risk involved in implementing these
modifications. Proceed at your own risk.
Understand that I provide NO support and assume NO
liability for damage to your system.
I strongly suggest you test this procedure on a separate
XP installation before attempting it on a primary system or
drive that you can't afford to reformat. |
As long as you've read
the above warning and understand the dangers involved, gathering the
tools to do the job is the next step in the procedure.
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Get great logo products to help promote your company. You can get any number of products emblazoned with your logo. Choose from pencils to stress balls to drink koozies, whatever you think your target demographic will love. --- Additional Resource --- |
The Tools
Resource Hacker
- Resource HackerTM is a freeware
utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources
in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It
incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and
works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating
systems. Navigate to
http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/ and download
Resource Hacker.
Jasc® Paint Shop Pro® 7
Anniversary Edition - Paint Shop Pro offers the easiest, most
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and take a lifetime to learn. And don't settle for slow,
cookie-cutter programs that tie you to templates. Get Paint
Shop Pro. Navigate to
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to download a fully functional, 30 day free trial version that can
be used in this procedure.
Once you have the above items you're
ready to proceed with the modifications. If you prefer to use a
different graphics program than the one I mentioned above it's
possible. Because of the way the logo graphics are stored it's
necessary to use a graphics program that allows pallets to be
imported.
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Next Page
September 07, 2005 - I received the following
note from Matt today and wanted to pass along the information as
well as a comment.
I was
reading your article about how to change the boot screen and
I thought you should know there is a safer and easier way: a
piece of freeware called Bootskin.
It is
listed on the Wincustomize website. To create a new boot
skin only requires that you have the pictures and an .ini
file that specifies how they fit together. The structure
also includes things such as the boot skin’s name and
author. Once you have a folder with these things in it you
can apply the new skin with the Bootskin program. If you
decide to revert to the standard one you just have to select
the default entry at the top of the list.
Matt
I haven't used
Bootskin and can't vouch for how well it actually works.
It's made by
Stardock that offers a number of different programs for
customizing the user interface. As Matt stated in his note, the
program is free for non-commercial use. I clicked on the
download link and was taken to C|Net's Download.com area. I
noticed that the CNET Editor's Rating was 4 stars but the
Average User Rating was 2.5 stars. It has been my experience
that Editor's Ratings are usually lower than Average User
ratings so I decided to read through the user reviews. I suggest
you do the same before you make a decision about using BootSkin
1.05. The one thing that jumped out at me were the comments that
in spite of supposedly being able to undo the changes if the new
boot screen didn't work, in many cases this function seemed to
fail and the system was unable to start at all, often times
necessitating a reinstall of XP.
Again, this isn't an
endorsement of the product or an admonition not to use BootSkin;
I'm simply saying that you need to be aware of the possible
consequences of changing any system files no matter how it's
done. The potential for disaster is always present so have a
complete, verified, and tested backup available prior to making
any system changes.
Jim / TEG
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