Barian

Just have one question: Where and how can I figure out on which partition the system will look for the boot.ini file during start up? The reason I am asking is that I have two physical hard drives in my system. The first hard drive contains two operating system and three partitions. The second hard drive contains two partitions. I ran into some problems and played around with the boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com.... The system then refused to boot so I went into the recovery console and typed fixboot. Then I could start the system again. The problem however was that the boot.ini and the other system files ended up on the second hard drive where I store all my applications and not on the first hard drive with the operating systems... Well I have continued to play around and now it won't boot again.... Anyway if you can answer my question it would assist me in my "learning by doing" approach...

When I first tried to run it manually I received the following error message: "Cannot import c:\..... The specified file is not a registry script. You can only import binary registry files from within the registry editor." And inside the registry when choosing import I received. "Cannot import c:\..... The specified file is not a registry file. You can import only registry files." Then I added the top line "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00" that you suggested and it made a huge difference, because the wallpaper had changed when I restarted the system. I then burnt a new cd with the top line added in the reg tweak... worked again. In other words, my problem seems to be solved thanks to you. Thanks a lot for your help. Now I will try make a few more changes to the cd. I am not so used to reg tweaking (and would like as little code as possible) so if you are not feeling bored by my questions maybe you have some quick answers to three more questions: 1. Under [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]. Wouldn't it be enough just to add the "Wallpaper"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Web\\Wallpaper\\MyWallPaper.bmp" (change default wallpaper) and leave out the two other lines ("TileWallpaper"="0" and "WallpaperStyle"="2"). The reason I am asking is that the two lines are present in the registry with values "0" and "2" by default. 2. What does this reg entry [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General] with "BackupWallpaper" and "Wallpaper" do for the system? The reason I am asking is that the line is not present (not needed?) on my non tweaked computer and I can't see the connection between Internet Explorer and the choice of wallpaper. 3. Why is double back-slash used in the reg tweaks, for example windows\\web\\wallpaper. Wouldn't it be enough with only a single back-slash for the system to be able to navigate to the correct folder and find the files?

I have tried it now but it didn't work. I then manually searched the registry for the two registry changes/instances but couldn't find the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General] key at all (I have it down to Internet Explorer but no Desktop and thus no General entry is visible). It doesn't exist per default and doesn't appear to be created as a consequence of the code in APPlications_before.reg. However I did find similar keys but under the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" and "HKEY_USERS". They are called: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General]. [HKEY_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General]. Both "BackupWallpaper" and "Wallpaper" in these two folders are created during the installation. However the APPlications_before.reg didn't change them since the code was supposed to change a registry record under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead. The key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] was found in my registry but had "TileWallpaper"="0" "Wallpaper"="bliss.bmp" (wasn't affected by the code in the APPlications_before.reg file) "WallpaperStyle"="2" In the i386-folder I have the WINNT.SIF file in which I have this section among some other sections: [GUIRunOnce] %systemdrive%\install\applications.cmd In the $OEM$\$1\Install\ folder I have the applications.cmd file containing: @echo off echo. echo . REGEDIT /S %systemdrive%\install\APPlications_before.reg EXIT and at last in the same folder $OEM$\$1\Install\ I also have the APPlications_before.reg file containing: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General] "BackupWallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\MyWallPaper.bmp" "Wallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\MyWallPaper.bmp" [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "TileWallpaper"="0" "Wallpaper"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Web\\Wallpaper\\MyWallPaper.bmp" "WallpaperStyle"="2" MyWallPaper.bmp is placed in the $OEM$\$$\Web\Wallpaper folder. The wallpaper is copied to the C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper folder during the installation according to plans. It is just not set to the default background, so I still get the bliss instead. Hope you want to try and help me again and can pinpoint what I am doing wrong. Thank you for your help this far.

Thank you very much for your help. I will try the solution as soon as possible.

Thank you for your answers! Correct me if I am wrong oneless, but does your solution mean that the displayed wallpaper after a fresh install of Windows will not be the bliss, but your own wallpaper called Windows XP sp2.bmp instead? If yes I hope you can tell me where I must put the supplied regedit code that tells the installation program to look for the default wallpaper in the "$OEM$\$$\Web\Wallpaper-folder" instead of the "i386-folder" where the bliss is to be found.

What I have tried is to unpack "bliss.jp_ " with winrar and then just add a little text in one of the corners to see if it would work. Then I used winrar again to compress it and copied to the i386 folder. Then I burnt an image cd but when the installation of the os had finished the desktop background was blue (not the modified or the original bliss was displayed). Maybe I should use another program instead of winrar to compress the image so I googled for the program suggested (diamond archiver) but found no immediate hits that might be of interest.

Have you tried a system restore?

When performing a fresh install of Windows XP the default desktop background is always set to "bliss". Assume that I want to have the background called "wind" as default background instead. The different desktop background can be found in the i386 folder (default BLISS.JP_) on the installation cd... Can anybody tell me where I can change the default image to "wind" instead of Bliss? I have copied the content of my cd to the hard drive and guess that the changes should be done somewhere in the "i386" folder (but I might of course be wrong). Where should I go from here?