LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Stray Dog Joined: 14 Aug 2001 Posts: 42 Location: USA

Well I have been working on changing my boot screen in WinXP. It took a few resets and changes but I do have some usable information.

Ok In Resource Hacker, I replaced bitmap 10 with a 1 pixel bitmap. basically erasing it. That is where the 'professional' comes from on the original boot screen. Now I can put it in my logo.

Bitmap 10 - Professional
Bitmap 11 - Home Edition
Bitmap 12 - Embedded

Bitmap 1 - Actual Boot Screen

Now Here are the basic colors that Windows loads into the bitmap palette. Until someone figures out how to changes these colors you will have to use these.

1- Black
2- Black
3- Dark grey
4- Dark Blue
5- Dark Green
6- Burgandy
7- Med Grey
8- Medium Green
9- Medum Blue
10- Orange
11- Light Blue
12- Light Green
13- Gold
14- Light Grey
15- White
16- White

Those are pretty close or I may be wrong. Correct me if I am.

The progress bar is at

257,353 378,353
257,363 378,363

Once I made my logo, I changed the palette to an all black palette. The reason being, when windows loads, I can see it flash moments before windows changes the palette. This way boot up looks as smooth as stock.

Hope this helps some of you

-Apuleus

Ohh BTW David Blaine is freakish, I loved how he kept stealing watches
I remember seeing the show a few years ago. ohh well peace out

Stray Dog Joined: 10 Sep 2001 Posts: 3 Location: USA

Which build are you using? I'm still using 2505, and if I replace the main .bmp, it seems to work fine - except that the overlays (i.e. "Professional") keep showing up. I'll try your method for getting rid of them.

Thanks for the info!!!

JK

Stray Dog Joined: 14 Aug 2001 Posts: 42 Location: USA

I am using XP Pro Corp(build 2600). That I havent tried 2505. So I am not sure on that one. If that is true I wish that was ported over to 2600, It would be nice to be able to change the colors. I am still looking for avenues to change them.

-Apuleus

Stray Dog Joined: 20 Sep 2001 Posts: 3

<< XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >>

Just like they say with the windows 2k instructions, make a copy of c:\windows\system32\NTOSKRNL.EXE and put i somewhere OTHER THAN c:\windows\system32

This took a lot of reboots to verify and a machine with on 64 megs of ram and windows XP takes forever, so here is the stuff i found out!!!

I did this on Windows XP professional build 2600 also known as RTM

ok...
I copied my NTOSKRNL.EXE to my c Undecided

drive and then opened it up with RESHACKER
I then expanded "bitmap" and went to #1 and put in my image (IMPORTANT: same rules apply, image has to be 640x480 16colors (NOT 16-bit, only 16 colors))
I then went to #5 and replaced this image with a image that was 1pixel by 1pixel (no clue what this did, but it did not hurt anything!)
I then went to #10 and replaced this image with a image that was 1pixel by 1pixel (this replaces the PROFESSIONAL that you would normally see on a normal bootup)
I then saved NTOSKRNL.EXE to my c Undecided

drive, and then rebooted and went into safemode for windows XP and then once i was logged in as ADMINISTRATOR, i copied my MODIFIED NTOSKRNL.EXE from c Undecided

to c:\windows\system32, i said YES to overwrite the one that was currently in c:\windows\system32 and then reboot.

IT WORKED!!!!!!!! (man i was so happy!!!!)

HOPE THIS HELPS!

Stray Dog Joined: 27 Aug 2001 Posts: 4

Quote:

<< XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >> << XP INFO >>

[....]

I then saved NTOSKRNL.EXE to my c drive, and then rebooted and went into safemode for windows XP and then once i was logged in as ADMINISTRATOR, i copied my MODIFIED NTOSKRNL.EXE from c to c:\windows\system32, i said YES to overwrite the one that was currently in c:\windows\system32 and then reboot.

IT WORKED!!!!!!!! (man i was so happy!!!!)

HOPE THIS HELPS!

To reiterate, this work is NOT necessary to choose an alternate kernel in Windows XP. Just as in Win2K, the /kernel switch in the boot.ini works fine, as far as it goes, and so LWDKernel.exe will be an elementary way to accomplish the same thing.
There still remains the issue of the locked color palette; as you mention in the Win2K thread, this procedue does no more to fix that problem than the easier methods available. Until that is done, replacing WinXP's boot logo is not very desirable, however easy it may be.

Stray Dog Joined: 20 Sep 2001 Posts: 3

i justed posted what i found since i tried that boot.ini scenario and could not get it work on windows XP and also help someone that was trying to change the XP bootup screen and could not find a good explanation specifically for windows XP

Stray Dog Joined: 14 Aug 2001 Posts: 42 Location: USA

A bit more info on the emmbeded bitmaps

4 - Load status bar - Grey
8 - Load status bar - Blue(Pro Version)
9 - Load status bar - Green

Just change the one your version uses.

-Apuleus

Stray Dog Joined: 01 Oct 2001 Posts: 2

is it possible to change the start button in xp?

Stray Dog Joined: 03 Oct 2001 Posts: 2

Yes you can. Open explorer.exe in ResHacker. Expand string table #34 and modify the item "click here to start" leave the quotes. This will change balloon popup on mouse over. Then go to #37 and modify "start" leave the quotes. Any amount of letters works, the button will "stretch". Then go to bitmap #176 action replace bitmap. Put in a new one about the same size. Click compile, save as exploiter.exe or whatever you want.
Open regedit to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell and point the shell to your new file, log off and back on.
Running 2526 RC2 and have done this no problem.

Stray Dog Joined: 01 Oct 2001 Posts: 2

Whenever i change the "start" to anythig my desktop just wont load, i can press alt+ctrl+del and get the windows task manager but i get no bar or icons on my sceen

Stray Dog Joined: 03 Oct 2001 Posts: 2

Hmm works over here.

Stray Dog Joined: 07 Oct 2001 Posts: 4

Where is the bitmap of the blue screen with "welcome" Have looked in ntoskrnl, msgina and winlogon without success ?

Stray Dog Joined: 08 Oct 2001 Posts: 6

HOW TO CORRECTLY CHANGE XP BOOT IMAGE

I will try and keep this short and simple. It took me a lot of effort to get my boot image just the way I wanted it and I have uploaded a version of one of mine here for you all to use as a guide.

NOTE: The XP startup image is composed of a system palette that you do not have access to edit. If one were to extract the XP startup images, they would find the images to be pure black. I tried the palette editing/replacement necessary for this hack in Photoshop, Fireworks, and Paintshop Pro. Of these, only paintshop pro is capable of palette editing required for this hack. You are welcome to prove me wrong.

[list][*]DOWNLOAD THE PALETTES
I extracted the system palette from Image 5 of NTOSKRNL.exe to create the palette for creating a custom boot menu. This palette is what you are limited to in creating your boot image and I have made the Paintshop version of the startup palette available for download here: http://www.angelfire.com/gundam/taoofbean/images/16.pal

You will also need the Black replacement palette that is already present in the default images located in NTOSKRNL.exe. Feel free to download the Paintshop version here: http://www.angelfire.com/gundam/taoofbean/images/win.pal

[*]EXTRACT IMAGES TO BE EDITED
The NTOSKRNL images you will be editing if you have the Pro version of XP are 1, 8 and 10. Extract all of these bitmaps and launch Paintshop Pro. The images for the home version are 1, 7 and 9. If you haven't screwed up, each of the three images should be pure black in paintshop pro.

[*]IMPORT CUSTOM PALETTE AND EDIT IMAGE
At this point, import(shift+O) the custom 16.pal palette I provided and ensure that you Maintain indexes. If you did this correctly, the images should no longer be all black and exact representations of what you see on startup. Image 1 is the main background, 7 or 8 are the loading images, and 9 or 10 are the text for your specific version.

[*]INSERT YOuR OWN CUSTOM IMAGES
Here, I edited the images to customize them to my own aims by switching bakc and forth between the 16 colors and RGB mode. RGB mode allows you to perform effects and fades, while the 16 color allows you clean to up the artifacts to represent exactly what you would like to see on bootup. Remember that the 16 color custom palette is what the image needs to be restricted to.
Once your image is perfect, import the custom win.pal palette to revert it back to all black. Ensure you again Maintained indexes and your image will now look pure black.

[*]REPLACE NTOSKRNL BITMAPS
With the replacement black palette, Save the images as a windows compatible BMP with Run Length Encoding. The file size should be extremely small. Compare it to the original extracted bitmap size from NTOSKRNL.exe adn it should be within 10 bytes of the original's size. I don't think it is possible to get the exact size for each image.

I also replaced my image 10 (the word professional) with a 1*1 pixel image so that I didn't have to deal with the issues of aligning my original image around this thing.

Once you have edited your particular three images, replaces the black palette, and saved them, replace them in your version of NTOSKRNL.exe

[*]REPLACE NTOSKRNL WITH CUSTOM VER
There is a dozen ways to get your version of NTOSKRNL to be used on bootup, I chose to save my custom images in a copy of the file adn replace the original in XP safemode.

I hope these directions work for you, here is my image for some inspiration.

Ishmael

Stray Dog Joined: 14 Oct 2001 Posts: 1 Location: USA

OK all good if you have paint shop pro but has anyone been able to do it with aDobe?

Stray Dog Joined: 07 Oct 2001 Posts: 8

ahha i know i did it the 1st time