Changing my Boot Screen

silver18boi · #1 Mar 6, 2004, 08:36 PM

Hey, i just bought a computer with windows xp home edition installed on it. And i went on to the net the other day and checked out some new boot screens, and themes etc on www.themexp.org... when i downloaded the one i liked the download went fine and it was put into a temp file... but when i read the instructions on how to change it... thats where the problems began. I followed them word for word... and everything seemed to be going good, but when i finished up and rebooted my computer expecting to see my new boot screen it was just the plain old screen...nothing new

. So i tried again, following the same instructions word for word, and again....nothing. >

.. I really want to change my computer around to something that i like so if you have any suggestions or anything please write me a email at [email address]

or

id greatly appreciate it. ;DThanks

psi42 · Mar 7, 2004, 12:11 PM

Quote:

author=silver18boi link=board=computers_for_beginners;num=1078634211; start=0#0 date=03/06/04 at 20:36:51]Hey, i just bought a computer with windows xp home edition installed on it. And i went on to the net the other day and checked out some new boot screens, and themes etc on www.themexp.org... when i downloaded the one i liked the download went fine and it was put into a temp file... but when i read the instructions on how to change it... thats where the problems began. I followed them word for word... and everything seemed to be going good, but when i finished up and rebooted my computer expecting to see my new boot screen it was just the plain old screen...nothing new

. So i tried again, following the same instructions word for word, and again....nothing. >

.. I really want to change my computer around to something that i like so if you have any suggestions or anything please write me a email at [email address]

or

id greatly appreciate it. ;DThanks

Quote:

]
1. Backup (copy) the file %windir%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe (most likely C:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe - the boot screen)
2. Download the .zip to your computer
3. Extract ntoskrnl.exe to a directory other than %windir%\system32 (most likely C:\windows\system32)
4. Reboot your computer into Safe Mode (hit F8 before the boot screen) or into true DOS (from a boot disk)
5. Overwrite the file %windir%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe (which should have been backed up) with the extracted exe
6. Reboot your computer as you normally would

whoa....... and i was told windows was so easy......
You have to overwrite your kernel to change the boot screen? okay.............

can you go through what steps exactly you did and how you did them?

silver18boi · Mar 7, 2004, 12:28 PM

ok i followed everything from that list, but i dont really understand on how you make a backup file...i tried a different method as well but it did not work either...i did get it so you can select which boot screen you want to boot when you first turn on your computer but they are both the same screen...i opened notepad in one of them and changed stuff in there... to everything i was told on the net but still wont work... what do i do once im in safe mode...log in to my account? then what do i do.... im running windows xp home edition so from there im not sure what im even doing? ???

silver18boi · Mar 7, 2004, 12:30 PM

here is what my boot says in notepad at the moment...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Window s
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windo ws XP" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windo ws XP Bootlogo" /fastdetect /KERNEL=winForce.bootskin

psi42 · Mar 7, 2004, 06:45 PM

I'm not familiar with ntldr so I can only guess. Hope someone else will show up and explain everything.

Quote:

]/KERNEL=winForce.bootskin

Not sure what is going on here...... is that a kernel or just a special "bootskin" file. If it is not a kernel, maybe the bootloader just gives up and defaults to the normal one.

Try just the regular instructions. By backup it just means copying the file to another secure place, so in case things get screwed up, you can easily fix it.

Then reboot into safe mode and put the new kernel in its place.......

~psi42

psi42 · Mar 7, 2004, 06:52 PM

okay you sent this to me

Quote:

]ok heres what i did starting from the beginning...first i went to www.themexp.org and found a boot screen that i liked, i clicked on download, and download was successful, it automatically put it into a folder, im assuming it was a temp file, then i unzipped the file to "My Documents" once there i tried clicking on one of the icons and my speakers made a clicking noise and the screen turned black for a couple seconds then returned to the screen that i was working on. Nothing happened. Then i clicked on start then control panel then performance and maintenance, then system, the system properties then pop up and i clicked on advanced and clicked on the settings in the startup and recovery menu then it pops up with "to edit the startup options manually, click edit, so i click on edit and notepad opens up with a bunch of code that i sent in my previous reply...i changed the code according to what i was told to do on the computer. Then i clicked on save and exited. From there i was told that it should work properly now so i rebooted my computer and it didnt work ........it did change in some way because when i first started my computer up it was on a screen where i could select what boot screen i wanted to startup...but i really dont know what to do now....

btw, please keep responses in this thread, in case someone else has the same problem they know what happened.....

Okay what happened was that ntldr, whose config file you modified, does not know where the downloaded thing is. Here is what you need to do.

1) Create a new folder on your desktop
2) Open it
3) Click Start-->Run, enter %windir%\system32\ in the box, and press enter.
4) In the new window that pops up, find the file that says ntoskrnl.exe and copy it into your new folder.
5) Reboot into safe mode (press F8 during startup)
6) Open up the folder with the downloaded file
7) Repeat step 3
8) Copy the downloaded ntoskrnl.exe (must be that exact name) that you just downloaded from themexp, into %windir%\system32\. Say it's okay to overwrite. Note that you are kind of taking a risk here, but what the heck
9) reboot, it should work.

silver18boi · Mar 8, 2004, 06:12 PM

Ok i followed the instructions above...did every step but when i went to copy the ntoskrnl file to the %windir%\system32\ it popped an error message reading that it cannot perform this task due to the fact that it cannot run in win32 mode...how do i change this? Ive tried figuring it out on my own. ???

psi42 · Mar 8, 2004, 10:12 PM

Quote:

author=silver18boi link=board=computers_for_beginners;num=1078634211; start=0#6 date=03/08/04 at 15:12:24]Ok i followed the instructions above...did every step but when i went to copy the ntoskrnl file to the %windir%\system32\ it popped an error message reading that it cannot perform this task due to the fact that it cannot run in win32 mode...how do i change this? Ive tried figuring it out on my own. ???

Are you running in safe mode?

LTheobald · Mar 9, 2004, 05:52 PM

Have you visited this page : http://www.belchfire.net/~userxp/

Download the "LogonUIBootRandomizer". It's a program that will help you change your logon and boot up screens without having to edit your boot.ini file manually.

silver18boi · Mar 9, 2004, 06:11 PM

thnx...but that doesnt seem to work either... i downloaded the required stuff....and the boot manager ... and for all 3 that i have downloaded an error message pops up that says "The compressed (zipped) Folder is invalid or corrupted"

im not sure what to do now....so my question is what the heck is wrong with my computer...its new...and i cant change anything...does anyone know what these problems can be from?



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