Change Your Windows Vista Boot Screen
Tired of seeing the same old Windows Vista logo every time you start Windows Vista? Here’s how you can replace it with any one you want—for free.
Start Windows Vista. Stare at the same boring boot screen you’ve seen approximately 2,984 times. Ho-hum. Another day of computing.
It doesn’t need to be that way. You can create your own boot screen for Windows Vista, or use a graphic you find online. And it’s easy to do.
First you’ll need to create or find a graphic for your new boot screen. You’ll need two versions of the graphic, one 1024 x 768 pixels, and one 800 x 600 pixels. They must be in 24-bit .bmp format.
If you can’t create them yourself, use Google’s image search (go to Google, then click the Images link and do your search). In your search results, under each image, you’ll see the dimensions of the graphic, so you’ll be able to know ahead of time whether it’s the right size (Figure 1-1). Note that if you come across a graphic in .jpg format, you can still use it, because you can have Internet Explorer save it as a .bmp.
Note: You can save time by finding just one file, a 1024 x 768 pixel image. You can then use your graphics software to make a copy of the file as an 800 x 600 pixel file, so that you’ll have two files, one 1024 x 768, and the other 800 x 600 . A great tool for doing this is the free IrfanView (www.irfanview.com). When you open a file in IrfanView, select Image
Resize/Resample, click 800 x 600 pixels on the right side of the screen, and click OK. Then save the file with a new name, making sure not to overwrite your original file.
In Internet Explorer, right-click the image you want to use, select Save Picture As, and in the Save As Type drop-down, select .bmp. Then save the file.
After you have both files, download, install, and run the free Vista Boot Logo Generator (www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=18). Click each of the “Browse for image” buttons and select your two graphics. You’ll see a screen like the one shown in Figure 1-2. Select File
Save Boot Screen As and save the file to any location on your hard disk. over. The program does not save the files as graphics, and instead will save them both as a single file, winload.exe.mui.
Figure 1-1. Searching Google for an image to use for your boot screen
Figure 1-2. Selecting a new boot screen for Windows Vista
Now that the file is saved, copy it to C:\Windows\System32\en-US. There will already be a file in that folder named winload.exe.mui, so make sure that you back up the original and replace it with this new one.
Note: Windows Vista may not allow you to overwrite the winload.exe.mui, file. If that’s the case, follow the directions in “Troubleshooting,” later in this hack.
Now run the MSCONFIG utility: type MSCONFIG in the Search box or at the command prompt and press Enter. Click the Boot tab, select “No GUI boot,” and click OK, as shown in Figure 1-3. You’ll be asked to restart Windows. Click Restart, and you’ll see your new boot screen in living, full-color glory.
Note: Whenever you run MSCONFIG to make a system change, it configures itself to run automatically on the next reboot. Because MSCONFIG requires administrative privileges, it can’t start automatically, and you’ll get a notification that “Windows has blocked some startup programs.” Click the blocked startup program icon in the notification area, choose the System Configuration Utility, and let it run. You’ll get a dialog window explaining that you’ve made changes to your startup configuration (and you can also tell MSCONFIG to stop showing this message at startup).
Troubleshooting
When you try to copy winload.exe.mui to C:\Windows\System32\en-US, you might get a permissions error of some sort, preventing you from copying the file. And even if you don’t get an error, when you restart Windows, you might not see your boot screen. If either of those things happens to you, follow this advice. It will solve the permissions problem.
First, run the command prompt as an administrator, by typing cmd at the Search box, and pressing Ctrl-Shift-Enter. Then type the following at the command prompt, and press Enter:
takeown /f C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui
You’ll get a message that you now have ownership of C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui. Next, type the following at the command prompt (where yourname is your username), and press Enter:
cacls C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui /G yourname:F
Figure 1-3. The last step in changing your Windows Vista boot screen
You’ll be asked whether you want to proceed. Press the Y key and then press Enter. You’ll get this: processed file: C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui
You can now go ahead and copy winload.exe.mui to C:\Windows\System32\en-US, and then proceed with the rest of the hack.
Tags: boot screen, Customize, vista, windows