MODIFYING YOUR WINDOWS 3.0 STARTUP SCREEN -- REALLY! BY MIKE MEZAROS After many hours of work, days and days of fiddling with all sorts of controls and settings, I have finally done what several people (INCLUDING a number of people at Microsoft) said was IMPOSSIBLE: I've changed my Windows 3.0 start-up screen! Of course, I managed to do it quite by accident (more on that later). So, I'm releasing this information into the public domain so that everyone who uses Windows 3.0 can take advantage of it. Of course, I can't take any responsibility if it zaps your system. All I can say is, it's working for me, and WONDERFULLY at that. I'm using a Ps/2 Model 70 (20Mhz 386DX) and a standard VGA. I don't know if this method will work with Hercules, CGA, EGA, or SuperVGA for sure, but I have no reason to believe that it won't. My method has been thoroughly tested (by myself) and I feel confident that it will work for everyone, regardless of their video card. As I understand the process, if you have a startup screen now (you know, the blue one with Microsoft's name in ten-foot high flaming letters), THERE IS NO REASON THIS METHOD SHOULDN'T WORK FOR YOU. Some Background Information --------------------------- 1) Disabling the startup screen -- does it work? There are a number of methods for simply disabling your startup screen. One of the more popular methods is in a text file floating around with some instructions on how to use DEBUG to accomplish this. Myself and others have found, however, that simply using the command "Win :" to load Windows works just as well. But "works just as well" is a very relative statement, because disabling your startup screen won't save you any time, it'll just free you from the agony of looking at Microsoft's brag screen. I don't know about you, but I didn't want my PC to become an advertisement for Microsoft -- they have enough money already. MANY, MANY people have timed this -- and the results vary... It seems that diabling your startup screen on a 386SX or better with a decent hard disk will save you, MAYBE, a fraction of a second. 286 users with slower hard disks have posted better results, along the lines of a second. Wow. So, disabling your startup screen is not the proper solution. What you REALLY want to do is make your OWN startup screen, just like the Mac users. (Well, thats what I want, anyway.) 2) hDC FirstApps custom startup screen -- does it work? Basically, no. FirstApps doesn't allow you to customize your startup screen, despite what it may say on the box! All it does is DISABLE the Microsoft startup screen, and then it loads its own application, which has its own, customizable startup screen. Did someone say "kludge"? Well, thats all it is. A kludge. Using this method to customize your startup screen is not a good idea... You'll wait 3-7 seconds LONGER for Windows to boot-up, and the results are often VERY DISAPPOINTING! 3) My Method -- does it work? Silly question, of course it works. But there's one thing you need first, a shareware program called WinGif (available on CIS, GEnie, and the Win*Net). Basically, any program that will save a picture in RLE4 format will work... WinGif is the only one I know of. (A program called Paint Shop claims to do this, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't do it. It'll view them, but it won't save them.) Best of all, using my method, Windows 3.0 will NOT take any longer to load! What to Do ---------- Create a new startup screen, using any method you want. Just make sure that its the proper resolution. If you're using VGA, just make sure that its 640x480. The best way to do this is with Windows Paintbrush, which allows you to stretch or shrink your image. Save your startup screen as XXXXLOGO.BMP (where XXXX is VGA, EGA, CGA, or HERC), preferably in your Windows/System directory. Now, load WinGif. Load your XXXXLOGO.BMP file into WinGif, and then Save it. When you save it, change the name from XXXXLOGO.BMP to XXXXLOGO.RLE, press the "Format" button in the save dialog box, and choose "RLE4." Save the XXXXLOGO.RLE file in your Windows/System directory. Now, exit Windows. Run SETUP from the DOS prompt in your Windows directory. -------------------------------------------------------- Change your video driver. Where it says "VGA" (or EGA or CGA or SuperVGA or whatever), change it to another -- for example, I change it from VGA to EGA. Tell SETUP to make the necessary changes. (SETUP will want to modify your CONFIG.SYS file. It doesn't matter if you let it or not, but you might want to tell it not to just for safety reasons.) When SETUP is finished, you'll be back at the DOS prompt in your Windows directory. Run SETUP again, and CHANGE YOUR VIDEO DRIVER BACK (in my example, change it BACK to VGA from EGA). Tell SETUP to make the necessary changes. (SETUP will want to modify your CONFIG.SYS file again. It still doesn't matter if you let it or not.) YOU'RE FINISHED --------------- The next time you run Windows 3.0, you'll see YOUR NEW STARTUP SCREEN! Why And How It Works -------------------- Beats me. According to some nice people who gave me some advice when I wanted to know WHY I couldn't change my startup screen, Windows somehow "compiles" the .RLE logo files into one of the Windows executable files. Quite by accident, I discovered that Windows SETUP program (when run from the DOS prompt) does this (or something along those lines). This is why you can MODIFY, and even DELETE, all of the .RLE files off of your disk, and the startup screen won't disappear. You need to use SETUP to "compile" the file into one of the executables. The only way to trick Windows SETUP into doing this without having to re-install Windows from scratch is to CHANGE VIDEO DRIVERS! I discovered this totally by accident when I HAD to change video drivers. Problems? Questions? Praise? New Cars? Free Babes? -------------------------------------------------- You can contact me on GENIE, my address is M.MEZAROS (my first name is Mike), and on CompuServe at 75500,655.