Boot screens: how do I use more than 16 colors?

[Adam S]

I've seen hundreds on www.themexp.org that are using more than 16 colors, including many with full color photos. how do you get around this restriction? am i missing something like a special program?

 

[LeeJend]

Those are Windows Splash (or login) screen. The boot screen is where your video card and cpu type are displayed.

There are some splash/login screen utilities for adding whatever you want. I can't remember the names. Search NTFS forums for them.

 

[Adam S]

no, they were boot screens. it's the screen that comes up before the login screen, that has the bar that moves from left to right.

 

[Jazzhound]

Check out http://www.belchfire.net/~userxp/indexbe.htm

It was in the How-To part of themexp.

 

[thebear]

you have to replace ntoskrnl.exe with a new one that conatins the desired bootscreen...though it is tempting to do - I wouldn't reccomend it. Replacing ntoskrnl.exe with a corrupt or messed up one will prevent you from booting windows

 

[Zedric]

So make sure you have an NTFS compatible boot disk or the XP CD ready just in case.

 

[SPeedY_B]

Originally posted by thebear
you have to replace ntoskrnl.exe with a new one that conatins the desired bootscreen...though it is tempting to do - I wouldn't reccomend it. Replacing ntoskrnl.exe with a corrupt or messed up one will prevent you from booting windows

Sure does, happened to me. Just copy your existing file to ntoskrnl.exe.back, then if it goes wrong, boot your XP cd (as Zedric said) and use the recovery console to copy the backup into its rightful place

 

[Corvette]

Well I learnt that lesson the hard way! I used the boot.ini trick but I used a badly coded boot screen. I had to use the Bootcfg command on the recovery console to fix it

 

[yoyo]

To answer the original question, it simply is not possible to use more than 16 colours for a boot screen. At least so far nobody found a way to get past this limitation.

 

[Corvette]

It's a Hardware Limitation really.
Graphics drivers are not loaded yet and that stage uses the VGA driver to show the boot screen

 

[musher70]

Copy either NTOSKRNLNOSP.EXE or NTOSKRNL.EXE to any directory on your hard drive such as C:\.
2. Rename the file to XPDBLOAD.EXE.
3. Move the file to C:\Windows\System32.
4. Open C:\BOOT.INI in Notepad and add /KERNEL XPDBLOAD.EXE to the line below [operating systems] (but don't forget the space after that long code!).
5. Save the file and restart your computer.


have an image backup b4 attempting
no themexp or xp plus required...

 

[musher70]

if you have sp1 you can only use sp1 boot screens
and not vice versa.....dl from themexp...