cotdagoo
2009-02-27, 01:53
howdy all,
been a long time xbox user that just made the jump to win32. having said that, i'm quite used to seeing an xbmc logo while starting up my xbox - and the windows xp loading screen can be an eye-sore while booting.
i tried some utils like bootskins - but only resulted in a bsod when it tried to load a custom bootscreen or 'skin'.
doing some more searching, i found you could add a couple parameter's to windows boot.ini and have it substitute a 640x480 16-color bitmap of your own choosing/design with the normal windows loading screen.
the following is what i added to my boot.ini :
before:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
after:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /bootlogo /noguiboot
once you've done that, place a 16-color bitmap with 640x480 resolution named boot.bmp in your C:\WINDOWS\ directory and reboot. if all you get is a blank screen, your image may not be 16-colors - you can open an image in mspaint and save it as a 16-color bitmap to ensure it is in the correct format.
the best part about this is that it's non-destructive to your boot process, doesn't modify any kernel files, etc.. looks great when your htpc boots right into xbmc too! :)
here's the image i'm currently using - http://www.sendspace.com/file/wcqqks
cheers
been a long time xbox user that just made the jump to win32. having said that, i'm quite used to seeing an xbmc logo while starting up my xbox - and the windows xp loading screen can be an eye-sore while booting.
i tried some utils like bootskins - but only resulted in a bsod when it tried to load a custom bootscreen or 'skin'.
doing some more searching, i found you could add a couple parameter's to windows boot.ini and have it substitute a 640x480 16-color bitmap of your own choosing/design with the normal windows loading screen.
the following is what i added to my boot.ini :
before:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
after:
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /bootlogo /noguiboot
once you've done that, place a 16-color bitmap with 640x480 resolution named boot.bmp in your C:\WINDOWS\ directory and reboot. if all you get is a blank screen, your image may not be 16-colors - you can open an image in mspaint and save it as a 16-color bitmap to ensure it is in the correct format.
the best part about this is that it's non-destructive to your boot process, doesn't modify any kernel files, etc.. looks great when your htpc boots right into xbmc too! :)
here's the image i'm currently using - http://www.sendspace.com/file/wcqqks
cheers