How to Change the Splash Screen in Windows XP

A "splash screen" is an image displayed on your computer screen while a program or website loads. In the Windows XP operating system, a black splash screen with the Windows XP logo appears after the computer is turned on. The image of the Windows XP logo can be changed to an image of your choosing by altering the code used to boot your system. A bitmap file with an image size of 640 by 480 can replace the Windows logo as long as it is saved in 16-color and 4-bit format.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Image file for splash screen

1. Open the file you want to appear in your splash screen in your preferred image-editing program. Save the file in 640-by-480 image size in 16-color and 4-bit format. Name the file "boot.bmp" and save it to your drive under the "C:\windows" location.

2. Open the "boot.ini" file. This file is located in the C:\ drive. By default, the file will open in the Notepad application.

3. Locate the fifth line of text in the boot.ini file. This line should begin with "multi(0)disk(0) rdisk(0)..." If it does not, locate the line that does begin with this text. You will need to add two commands to this line.

4. Add the commands "/bootlogo" and "/noguiboot" (without quotes) to the end of the line of code. Separate each command with a space, but do not put a space after the last command. The line of code should look similar to "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /bootlogo /noguiboot". The partition number and version of Windows XP may differ, depending on your system.

5. Save the changes to the code and close the boot.ini file. Restart your computer to view the changes to your splash screen.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not edit your system's boot.ini code if you are not comfortable or experienced with computer coding. Erroneously changing the code can interfere with your computer's ability to boot.

References

• National Instruments