how does this program edit the boot screen?

[Romeo26222]

Hello

I know the only 3 ways to edit the boot screen in winxp is to edit the ntoskrnl.exe file or add KRNL line in the boot.ini and the last way is adding boot.bmb iamge in windows dir and write a line i don't remeber it now in boot.ini file

but i tried this program 'stardock bootskin' and after applying the skin i tried to treace the changes in ntoskrnl and in boot.ini but i didn't find anything

so anyone knows what does this program do to edit the boot screen???

BTW this is a free program

[SiMoNsAyS]

good one, i was wondering the same sometime ago

if i remember correctly it simply runs at the time ntoskrnl is displayed so it doesn't have anything to do kernel, boot.ini or whatever.

a deeper explanation will be appreciated

[jdaniel]

a deeper explanation will be appreciated

this would be nice.

i found a nice boot skin on another site but it only works with BootSkin.

how to make from it an exe file ? ntoskrnl.exe file. to include it on my unattended cd ?

thanks in advance.

[phkninja]

as far as i know it creates a backup of the ntoskrnl file, and then puts its copy of the ntoskrnl in its place. by not changing the name from ntoskrnl.exe it doesnt require /KERNEL= because it uses the default name

e.g

copy ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl_back.exe

copy oemkrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe

(taking oemkrnl.exe to be the name of the kernel bootskin installs)

If thats not what happens, then let me know

Edited May 25, 2006 by phkninja

[jdaniel]

as far as i know it creates a backup of the ntoskrnl file, and then puts its copy of the ntoskrnl in its place. by not changing the name from ntoskrnl.exe it doesnt require /KERNEL= because it uses the default name

e.g

copy ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl_back.exe

copy oemkrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe

(taking oemkrnl.exe to be the name of the kernel bootskin installs)

If thats not what happens, then let me know

thanks for the quick reply. i will try this asap and i will let you know... it's almost to easy...

thanks again

[jdaniel]

i did not find any backup of my ntoskrnl. does the BootSkin file (backup) have other name ?

thanks

Edited May 25, 2006 by o_owd

[phkninja]

the file wont be called ntoskrnl_bak.exe, that was just an example.

Try looking in bootkins folder to see if there is a backup folder, or in the windows\system32 directory to see if there is a backup file there.

Dont know exactly how bootskin works, but to me logically thats how I would do it.

(So its what I think it does)

[jdaniel]

well, i did searched for a backup file. could not find it.

there are two options

1 - i am so stupid that i cannot find it

2- there is no backup file

anyway, i will try to make my first modified ntoskrnl. as soon as i will get it with the "load palette" thing.

thanks.

[Ophiel X]

use filemon

[HyperHacker]

What, so you can just plop your EXE in place of ntoskrnl.exe like any other program, and have it call the original? I always wanted to have a program that runs during or intercepts the boot process to display a more-than-16-colour image. Any info on this is greatly appreciated.

[AlYum]

BootSkin doesn't modify ntoskrnl, it creates file called vidstub.sys in SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ folder and writes some stuff in SYSTEM branch of registry, which forces this driver to start before ntoskrnl, believe it or not, and kinda substitute kernel's resources and code for loading boot screen picture and progress bar. But this vidstub.sys still uses bootvid.dll as VGA boot driver, just like ntoskrnl, so there can be still only 16 colors in boot screen. I read that BootSkin developers promised to include support for 256 colors in next versions, but there're no such yet. I think someone has to modify code in bootvid.dll somehow, besides ntoskrnl, if they want to use 256 col (8bit) bmp as a boot screen.