Create A Personalized Boot Logo Screen

Making the Changes

The file that is going to be modified to create the new boot logo is ntoskrnl.exe that is located in C:\Windows\System32. The first step is to make a copy of ntoskrnl.exe and rename it ntoskrnl.bak. It's probably overkill, but I'd also make a couple of extra copies and store one on a floppy and another on a second hard drive or CD if you have those options.

Fire up the Resource Hacker program and open the ntoskrnl.exe file as shown in Fig. 01.

Fig. 01

The left hand column contains a list of editable resources displayed in Explorer tree format. The Bitmap tree is the one we'll be concerned with for this procedure. Bitmaps 1, 7, and 9 are used for XP Home Edition and 1, 8, and 10 are used for XP Professional. This article deals with the Professional version so expand bitmap 1 as shown in Fig. 02. You may expect to see something interesting when you do so, but at this point all you'll see in the right pane is a black image. I'll explain why as we get further along in the process. For now, just click the Action menu and save the bitmap.

Fig. 02

This article deals with the Professional version so expand bitmap 1 as shown in Fig. 02. You may expect to see something interesting when you do so, but at this point all you'll see in the right pane is a black image. I'll explain why as we get further along in the process. For now, just click the Action menu and save the bitmap to a folder you create somewhere on the system. Repeat the process for bitmaps 8 and 10. After the bitmaps have been saved it's time to edit them to create the new boot logo.

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