Utility of the Month: STARTUP.BAT Have you ever wanted to change the screen Microsoft Windows 3.0 displays when you start it? With STARTUP, you can create your own Windows start-up screen. After you create your screen and save it in 4-bit RLE format (more about that later) simply type: STARTUP rleimage[.rle] [/e] [d:\winpath\] from the DOS prompt. Replace the above "rleimage[.rle]" with the name of your RLE-4 format graphics screen. The .RLE extension is not necessary. If you are using an EGA monitor, follow the RLE file with a "/e" switch. If Windows is installed on a drive or directory other than the current one, enter the name of the path after the RLE file name for VGA systems or after the "/e" switch for EGA systems. Be sure to end the directory name with a \ character if other than the default directory of the Windows drive! Example: STARTUP mystart /e c:\windows\ or ... STARTUP mystart.rle d: How it Works: Each time you install Windows, STARTUP creates a file called WIN.COM. This is the program that runs when you type "WIN" to load Windows. WIN.COM is an essential housekeeping program that does several important tasks such as finding the path where Windows is located, checking for the existance of HIMEM.SYS and any Extended Memory Managers, loading PROGMAN.EXE, and -- of course -- displaying Microsoft's logo screen. All the STARTUP does to create this file is to combine three files: a program loader called WIN.CNF, a logo display routine (called variously VGALOGO.LGO, EGALOGO.LGO, CGALOGO.LGO, EGAMONO.LGO or HERCLOGO.LGO depending on your system configuration) and the start-up screen's graphics file, named as the display routine, but ending with the extension .RLE (Run-Length Encoded 4-bit -- a graphics file format). These files are saved in the SYSTEM subdirectory of your Windows directory. SETUP just copies these files, one after the other, into one single file called WIN.COM. STARTUP creates a NEW WIN.COM for you. If you ever want to switch BACK to the old WIN.COM, just run STARTUP and tell it to use VGALOGO.RLE, located in the SYSTEM subdirectory of your Windows directory. Example: STARTUP C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\VGALOGO.RLE It's that simple! NOTE: If you are running Windows on a system with a graphics adapter other than EGA (Color) or VGA, you may add your own support by loading STARTUP.BAT into a text editor and changing all occurrences of "VGALOGO.LGO" to the name of the graphics loader file mentioned above that corresponds to your setup. Creating RLE Files: If you want to make your OWN RLE file, just create a graphics file no larger than 640 x 480 (640 x 250 for EGA systems) in Windows Paint or other suitable paint program. The image may have no more than 16 colors. Save it as a BMP or GIF file (if your paint program allows GIF format). Next, you must get a graphics conversion program such as the excellent WinGIF or Paint Shop utilities (found on most bulletin-board systems or available from many Shareware vendors). Load the BMP or GIF file and immediately save it again, selecting the "Format RLE" or "Format RLE 4" option. That's it! You now have a suitable RLE file for use as a start-up screen. You can also use this procedure to convert existing graphics files you may have downloaded or received on disk. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the image is too complex and the file is too large (over about 55k), it will not display properly or you will receive a "Program too large to fit in memory" error when you try to run Windows. If this happens, load the file back into your paint program or conversion utility and try to "dither" it to a smaller palette size or resize it to fit into a smaller area and then center it in a solid background. Read the documentation for your conversion utility or paint program for more information on how to do this. Some files may not be useable as start-up screens for this reason. Once you've created your own start-up screens, you'll never want to go back to Microsoft's plain vanilla start-up again! -- Kevin Bachus # # # This file and the associated STARTUP.BAT file appeared in the February, 1991, issue of InfoNet Monthly (Electronic Edition). Both are Copyright 1990 by December Rose Publications. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted to distribute the program freely so long as both files remain intact and together. You may NOT charge more than a nominal distribution fee for the files. 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