MrMaguire

I'm thinking that maybe I can put together some registry file that will do the same thing in one fell swoop.

Now that I've successfully modified the Windows 2000 splash screen, I want to try the same thing on Windows XP. Remember how XP RTM and SP1 had the "Professional" designation on the splash screen? I do, and I want that in SP3. So, first thing I did was to set up a fresh copy of XP Professional RTM and I looked to compare its NTOSKRNL.EXE with that of a fully updated XP Professional SP3 install. Problem was: The bitmap resources in NTOSKRNL.EXE seem to be mostly blank, and mostly the same between the two. Are the actual bitmaps used for the splash screen stored elsewhere? What am I missing? Click to see the full size image

I finally got it to work! I took a fresh copy of the splash screen and put some text on it in MS Paint just as a test, and that worked just fine. So, it was obviously something that Fireworks did that isn't compatible, probably because it doesn't support exporting as a 16 colour bitmap. So I took another fresh copy of the splash screen and cut and paste the greyed out parts onto it and exported it as a 16 colour bitmap. Not it works just fine without issue. Pretty sweet, huh? If anybody wants the original bitmap file to put in their own NTOSKRNL.EXE file, just tell me and I'll make it available. I also modified the Windows 2000 Server splash screen: I added the scrolling bar from the one above. Same deal, if you want the bitmap let me know.

Well.... After copying those elements and restarting, I get this: Well, it's 90% of the way there. All you have to do now is remove the link to the Luna theme style. And... There we go. I had no idea that it could be done with TweakUI. I wonder what exactly it's copying and where. I haven't noticed a profile for the SYSTEM account anywhere, or at least not in the Documents and Settings directory. Thanks MrMateczko!

I can also confirm that the issue has been resolved on both Windows XP and 2000 XP: 2000:

Back in 2010 I wanted to do this. I searched high and low on the interweb, trying to find someone else that had done it before. Unfortunately it seemed to be one of those things that confused a lot of people. People on forums and what not seemingly didn't realise that there was a difference between the Classic Theme, and the Luna theme without the actual visual style applied (what you get when you disable the Themes service). Well, there is. What I'm about to cover is the method that I've discovered of changing the theme on the Windows XP classic style logon screen to use the Windows 2000 style Windows Classic Theme. Why on earth would you want to do such a thing? If you prefer to use the Windows 2000 style Windows Classic Theme and the Windows 2000 style classic logon screen on Windows XP, you'll notice that there is a change in appearance between reaching the logon screen, and then reaching the desktop after logging in. There is really only one reason to change the theme on the logon screen in my case: because I want everything to match. There ya go. I'm really not sure if it would make anything faster. Though it certainly does look nicer over a remote connection, such as RDP. I have discovered two different ways of doing this. Both require accessing the SYSTEM account in different ways. There really is no way around it. If it can be done in the registry, I don't know where to look. One of the methods requires messing with sethc.exe in the System32 folder (the sticky keys executable), and the other involves pulling a trick with Command Prompt. I'll be showing the latter. _________________________ The first thing you want to do is, log on to an administrator account. If a domain administrator account is what you have, that should work just the same. Then open Command Prompt and enter: at 10:41 /interactive “cmd.exe” Where "10:41" is a time just after the current time. If it's 19:17 (7:17PM), enter 19:18 or 19:19 for example. I think the time does need to be entered in the 24-hour format, though I'm not sure. That command will schedule a new task, for Command Prompt to open. And because the system is taking care of that task, Command Prompt will open under the SYSTEM account. Once the system opens Command Prompt for you, you'll need to open the Task Manager and "kill" explorer.exe. The taskbar and desktop icons should disappear. Warning: Do not confuse the two open Command Prompt windows. Make sure to close the one used to schedule the task, and you should be left with the one opened by the system. Then you go to your system Command Prompt window and enter: explorer.exe You should see some activity. Running explorer.exe should log on to the SYSTEM account. Once it does, you can check the start menu and you should see the SYSTEM username. Now it's just a simple matter of changing the theme. It should be the default Luna blue with the bliss background (even though the background is not present on the logon screen, I think if you change it, it will be set there). You don't have to change it to the Classic Theme. Literally what ever style you want should work. This method may even work on Windows 2000 to change its logon screen theme appearance. Warning #2: Remember, this is the SYSTEM account. It's the most powerful account in any Windows NT install. It has control over everything. I would advise just to set the theme the way you want and leave. Changing the start menu style and things like that don't make any difference to the way the logon screen will look anyway. And I would advise against running any software or accessing any network resources. So once you've got the SYSTEM account looking the way you want, simply open the start menu and click "Log off". Once you do, it should log off of the SYSTEM account and go back to the logon screen. Sort of "logonception". And once you get to the logon screen, you should be greated with your custom theme style! Oh, happy days. "And that's that."

This is the error that I get when I uninstall Office 2007 using the chrome tool. As you can see it's complaining about MSVCR80.DLL being missing. And it is after uninstalling Office 2007. I have tested it in multiple virtual machines and I get the same result every time. The solution to the problem was simple: I copied MSVCR80.DLL over from another unofficially updated Windows 2000 machine and placed it into system32. Now no error. I just thought I'd post this little update. I can probably go ahead and remove Office 2007 with confidence now, and solve a lot of the other mentioned issues.

I saw that thread too. The suggested work-around is to either rename or delete the "c:\windows\software distribution" folder after stopping the Automatic Updates and Background Intelligent Transport Services. After doing that, the update system is kinda "reset" for lack of a better word. But for me it just goes straight to the 0x80248015 error after prompting me to "Try Microsoft Update Today!".

I get the same error on each of my Windows XP/2000/2003 machines. 0x80248015 with the error message above. I haven't seen the 404 error, or the missing directory error at all. What I find interesting is that one of my XP x64 installs with the Windows Update client (instead of the newer Microsoft Update client), seems to connect to Windows Update perfectly fine, every time. Except it won't actually connect to Windows Update, it connects to Microsoft Update, and it doesn't look like it's being re-directed. I have a feeling that this may be a regional problem. I've heard from somebody in Australia who just did a fresh install of Windows XP recently and didn't have any issues whatsoever. And I've heard from people in North America who say that Windows/Microsoft Update has been working intermittently, but mostly working at that.

I saw the same behaviour that Adric noted. Automatic updates worked, but the website didn't.

I did notice it last week with Windows 2000. I thought it was just an isolated issue, possibly due to the newer release of BWC's extended kernel. But I soon found that not to be the case, and today I noticed that it was affecting XP and Server 2003 too. At least one other person I know had noticed it on Windows 2000, but only intermittently. It seemed to mostly work for them.

Hmm, I wonder which update that might be. The Windows XP machines affected are up-to-date with the latest POS Ready released updates.

It would seem that the Windows/Microsoft Update site is a little bit broken. I noticed this recently and first thought that it was just a problem with Windows 2000. But it seems to be affecting Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as well. All of the affected OS's give that same error message, with IE6 and Microsoft Update on Windows 2000, and IE8 and Microsoft Update on XP and Server 2003. Strangely enough, it would seem that the older (I think) Windows Update client still works, at least that is the case on my main computer running Windows XP x64. Has anyone else noticed this issue?

The "Disable Adjusting Toolbars" group policy is pretty close to what I was looking for. Thanks.

Anyone know what might be causing the problem? I'm all out of ideas. Maybe BlackWingCat could help since he has already modified the splash screen before.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. I'll need to remake and replace the file every time a new version of UUR is released, which I honestly don't mind.

Try number 4. This time I exported the image from Fireworks and then opened it in MS Paint to save it once again as a 256 colour bitmap. Yes, I added even more grey. But I think that's all I want to change. Anyway, after putting this bitmap into a fresh copy of NTOSKRNL.EXE, I got the same result as above, except this time it was red with the yellow loading bar! I didn't manage to get a screenshot.

Try number 3. This time I decided to play it safe by ditching thew new scrolling bar bitmap and just modified what was already there. I replaced the dark blue with dark grey, and the lighter blue with lighter grey. Implementing this using Resource Hacker gives me the exact same result as above. There must be something that Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 (my image editor) is doing to this, or maybe I'm just not using the correct export settings.

I put my new splash screen together, and this is what I came up with: I like the way it turned out. But I'm having a problem implementing it. I basically just exported the bitmap from NTOSKRNL.EXE and created the scrolling bar separately. After getting the dimensions and colours right, I exported the new scrolling bar as a BMP 8 image and pasted it over the original. I replaced the existing splash screen with this in Resource Hacker and then replaced NTOSKRNL.EXE through the recovery console. After rebooting I get this: Woah, trippy man. At first I thought that the slight mis-positioning of the new scrolling bar over the old one was causing some confusion. I fixed that and still get this. Then I thought that maybe it wasn't able to display all of the colours in the black and grey gradient, so I reduced the colour palette so it looked more like the original. And still nothing. The file implemented is a BMP 8 image, 640x480 pixels just like the original. Any ideas what went wrong here? How does the scrolling bar mechanism even work anyways? I remember when I created my custom MSGINA.DLL file for the logon interface, the banner and scrolling bar were two separate components that could be replaced perfectly fine, but this is just one image.

Thanks very much, Tommy. I'll look there.

The ability to lock the taskbar was introduced in Windows XP. I would like to be able to do that in Windows 2000. Is it as easy as changing or adding some registry value? I really have no idea how it works. I'm guessing that there are resources that need to be added to system files and everything. Maybe someone with more technical knowledge can shed some light on the situation. All I know is that I'm forever accidentally modifying parts of the taskbar: Accidentally make it double-height, accidentally changing the order of the quick launch icons and even somehow grabbing the quick launch bar and putting it on the other side of the taskbar, by the clock.

I really like the way BlackWingCat has modified the Windows 2000 splash screen, and I would like to add to it. I really like the black loading bar. That looks pretty slick, and I like the "Powered by Extended Kernel" text too. What I want to change here is the scrolling blue bar. I want to make it a similar black to the loading bar with a slight gradient to dark grey. I can handle making new bitmaps and all that jazz. Question is: Where do I get access to the resources for this? Are they hidden in some system file? Which one?

Does there exist a guide for installing the unofficial Windows 2000 updates? I've been experimenting and using Windows 2000 with the unofficial updates for a while now, and I'm still not 100% sure in which order the updates should be installed in. Not only that, but I'm also curious about what other updates there may be, and the Unofficial Service Pack 5 and how useful it really is when you already have a Windows 2000 with all of the official updates from Microsoft. I have learned already that tomasz86's and BlackWingCat's packages should not be installed together. For example, installing Unofficial Update Rollup and then BlackWingCat's extended kernel files will make Windows blue screen at the desktop. Or at least in my experience it has. I'm still kinda wondering what benefit exactly the Unofficial Service Pack 5 has now. The way I see things: back in the day (2006, I think), having all of those post-SP4 updates incorporated into one package would've been advantageous. But now, as long as Windows 2000 is already up to date when the unofficial packages are installed, what's the point? Maybe I'm missing something, I'm just assuming that USP 5 was designed with update convenience in mind. If you have experimented with the unofficial updates for Windows 2000, I kindly ask you to share your experiences. What worked for you? What didn't work for you? It'd be nice to know what is recommended and what should be avoided, so that newcomers such as myself have a better grip on the process from the beginning.

I've been using unofficially updated Windows 2000 for a while now, and I just wanted to report a couple of issues to the right person. First off: Thank you. Not just to tomasz86, but to everyone involved with keeping Windows 2000 as a usable everyday operating system. The unofficial support provided at the cost of nothing just shows how dedicated you all are. Now with that out of the way... The first issue I've been having regards Microsoft Office 2007. I installed it via BlackWingCat's Chrome Tool. It installs fine, and almost everything seems to work. My issue is with Outlook. I use Outlook as my primary email client on Windows. I've noticed that I can be writing an email in outlook and it will just freeze out of nowhere. It doesn't become unresponsive and it doesn't outright crash. It just freezes, and it won't let me copy the written text, which can be quite frustrating. I really haven't looked into whether or not the same issue occurs on Windows XP or newer with Outlook 2007, due to the fact that I use Office 2010 now. As a side note: Office 2010 on Windows 2000 would be awesome! Another issue is with adding a second email account within outlook. I use Hotmail with the Outlook Connector, and I tried adding my GMail account as a MAPI account, but it won't add it. I can't recall the exact error that occurs after entering my account credentials and server information. I'll try and get the details on this problem later. Another problem is with uninstalling Office 2007. The uninstallation process always seems to leave some error messages and such when it is completed. When I uninstall office 2007, I set the compatible registry using the Chrome Tool, just like I would when installing it. I've wanted to downgrade my Windows 2000 computers to Office 2003, but I have no confidence that the uninstallation procedure will leave Windows 2000 in a re-usable state. Usually the error messages produced by the uninstallation procedure involve dynamic link libraries. So those problems involve Office 2007. Office 2007 isn't the most reliable office suite in the world, so I'm not sure if and how these problems can be fixed. __________________ Now for the Windows related problems. For a while I used the January 2014 daily release of Unofficial Update Rollup and had very little issue. The only issue I had was with the installer. It produced an error stating that: "c:\winnt\system32\shell32.dll is open or in use by another application", and then prompted me to close running applications and retry or cancel. Of course, that error message was from the Nov. 8th release (of which I'll elaborate on shortly). With the January 2014 release, the work-around was to kill the explorer process in task manager and then choose "Retry". It has also been reported by another unofficial update user that closing iTunes will free up shell32.dll. This error message is also present in both the Nov. 8th and Nov. 14th release of Unofficial Update Rollup. With those releases, there is no need to kill the explorer process. All that is needed (in my case at least) is to close the folder window that the updater is present in. Because I keep the updates on my file server, I navigate to the installer and run it from the GUI. __________________ The next issue involves VMware player and its VMware Tools. Ever since installing the Nov. 8th release of Unofficial Update Rollup in multiple test virtual machines, they have all produced an error at startup stating that VMware Tools has crashed. That's the error you see below. Followed by: Installing the Nov. 14th release has not served to rectify this crashing problem. I've also tried re-installing VMware Tools. It seems to make no difference. Could this be another problem with the latest incarnation of the extended kernel? Or maybe even some bug with my own installs. These errors do occur on multiple test virtual machines, as mentioned previously. By the way. How should a newer release of the Unofficial Update Rollup be installed? Should the old one be removed first, or should the new one just be installed over top of the old on? I've been doing the latter. __________________ I just wanted to put this post together to report some of my issues out of using unofficially updated Windows 2000 for well over 6 months now. This post isn't intended to be bitchy or whiny or a shot at anyone.

Would you have any documentation to show what was fixed? I'm just curious.