Help with boot images

[tiwas]

Hey all,

I'm making a bunch of Boot Screens for my unattended installation, and will, in the near future, make some sort of routine for changing between these (does this exist, by the way?)

Now, I have followed the instructions under the unattended CD/DVD guide, but it still isn't working. I get the menu choices when I boot, but even though the files are copied I still get "the good ol'" windows logo. So...I'd appreciate any help I can get!

To start off; if I name the boot files ntoskrnl.exe and place them in the system32 dir they seem to work fine. If I, like the guide says, place them under $OEM\$$ they do not. I've also tried placing them under $OEM\$$\system32, but that doesn't work either. Do they need to have a strict 8.3 filename? Is the placement \windows or \windows\system32? ntoskrnl.exe resides in \windows\system32...

Cheers!

[ceerp]

So when windows is already installed and you manually put them into windows\system32 they work? But when they are in OEM\$$ for the installation they do not and you end up with the original windows boot screen?

I have had that problem. ntoskrnl.exe seems to do more than just take care of the booting when windows is being installed. I have had windows install fine until the last reboot and it goes wrong. However, this only happens when I change the colour pallet. If I leave the colour pallet alone and just change the bitmap it works fine.

You may also have to run in a command window: modifype.exe ntoskrnl.exe -c

to make the installation believe that it's the original microsoft file.

My solution to the problem is this: I have an ntoskrnl.exe in I386 which has been modified. The colour pallet is the same old 16 horible colours but I use a bitmap that says "Building Windows". That way it looks like something is happening. Then once windows is installed I use deskcln.cmd to move a nice boot screen (with changed pallet) from an OEM folder into system32. After a reboot it looks great! No more horrible windows flag!

I don't know if that solution appeals to you because it seems like you want nice boot screens while you are installing. If you ever get a boot screen with a changed pallet to be accepted by the windows installation let me know how!

[tiwas]

Seems I found a good solution!

I've now two boot logos - one called "under construction" (I blatantly stole the graphics :op) and one called "blank". I've put the construction logo with my source, so it's installed with windows and gives me a nice "this stuff is being set up" atmosphere throughout the whole setup. Then, during GuiRunOnce, I remove this line from boot.ini (and then I no longer care about wfp) and set up my blank (from $OEM\$$\system32) as the default and use bootskin to skin it from then on. The reason why I even cared to make a blank boot logo is that bootskin has a small delay where you can see the old logo - which I do not want.

If anyone's interested I can go into more detail...

Cheers!