Waht's your boot screen looks like ?

[Thenasty]

Can you show you boot screen ? I'm looking for some samples. TIA

[pointdablame]

     Sorry... I couldn't resist

[Thenasty]

hehe...Well here is what I started with..

[SpamMe]

[Minwah]

 

[Silver]

Is that meant to be blank?

[danny_galaga]

minwahs screen is the most poignant. i think this is a reflection of extremes in todays society. the black of the startup screen prepares us for a dark time indeed. and yet when a game starts, the total antithesis is true. the game is vibrant, dynamic and so full of 'joi de vivre'. the irony of this juxtaposition is not lost on fellow mamers. if it causes us to ponder the very existance of being, giving that it makes us feel a, je ne se quoi, perhaps a feeling of deja vu. even as it does, for who can forget those innocent days when as kids, we would take our pocket money and blow it on space invaders. yet even as we feel deja vu, so too we experience jaime vu since there are so many games to explore that we have never experienced before.
 so when people say 'yes, but is it art?' i must most resolutely exclaim 'it certainly freakin' is!'

[danny_galaga]

oh, what were we talking about? oh, yes. mine's a capture from the galaga test screen. looks appropriate, even if it is sideways...
(i left the machine all grubby because i thought it had a great 'pub' feel about it)

[danny_galaga]

oh, what were we talking about? oh, yes. mine's a capture from the galaga test screen. looks appropriate, even if it is sideways...
(i left the machine all grubby because i thought it had a great 'pub' feel about it)

edit: i also got rid of the windows start up sound (win98) and inserted one of mames 'sample' sounds. initially it was a 'berzerk' sound but i found that too jarring. now it's a 'space invaders mother ship being hit' sound which is more pleasant...

[Minwah]

Is that meant to be blank?

Yes, I removed the boot screen altogether

danny_galaga: not sure what you were on about exactly but I like your boot screen!

[Silver]

yes nice - remove all hints of it being a pc... but how long does yuor machine take to boot up?

[Thenasty]

update on my Boot Screen.

[Minwah]

yes nice - remove all hints of it being a pc... but how long does yuor machine take to boot up?

About 45 seconds last time I timed...from hitting power switch to FE loaded.  I was a bit annoyed as when I tried reducing the boot time using some tweaks, in some cases it actually made the boot time longer.  I have had other XP machines boot in 30 seconds or less.

My PC seems to take quite a while to begin to load Windows, but at least my Asus mobo has the nice mylogo feature to make your own screen to cover the POST screens.  The time with the black screen (instead of the XP boot screen) is actually not very long.  I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

[danny_galaga]

Is that meant to be blank?

Yes, I removed the boot screen altogether

danny_galaga: not sure what you were on about exactly but I like your boot screen!

hehe. i was just trying to be a wanky art critic  

[BarontheFirst]

I didn't make it but I came across it and use it!

[mcdo15]

I didn't make it but I came across it and use it!

i like that, where u get that from

[Wizard of DelRay]

Get it here http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?searchtext=mame&sort=updatedate&order=Descending&library=32.

You need BootSkin to use it, which can be found here http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin/.

[froggerman]

Get it here http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?searchtext=mame&sort=updatedate&order=Descending&library=32.

You need BootSkin to use it, which can be found here http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin/.

Thanks for the great pointer. What a great way to change your boot screen!

[SNAAKE]

Meh..

[Silver]

My PC seems to take quite a while to begin to load Windows, but at least my Asus mobo has the nice mylogo feature to make your own screen to cover the POST screens.  The time with the black screen (instead of the XP boot screen) is actually not very long.  I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

Hmm I'm pretty sure that this can be done - I thibnk I've had it like that in the past, but need to check if it was with XP. You definately need to have only 1 registered user on the pc (apart from guest account), and there must be no password set (different from autologing on with a supplied pw via TweakXP) and the pc must be part of a Workgroup not a Domain... But that may still show "loading preferences" etc..., can't remember....will check...

45 secs sounds quite long if its a modern machine, especially if you are runing Minwah as the shell. Usually delays are network (logging on/connecting drives), hardware (some scsi/additional ata controllers are notorious for adding 10 secs) or loading drivers for not-present hardware. Also you can disable about 70% of services which helps loads - especially some network ones like "Workstation".

Apologies for off topic. My bootscreen: (can't remeber where its from)

[Minwah]

45 secs sounds quite long if its a modern machine, especially if you are runing Minwah as the shell. Usually delays are network (logging on/connecting drives), hardware (some scsi/additional ata controllers are notorious for adding 10 secs) or loading drivers for not-present hardware. Also you can disable about 70% of services which helps loads - especially some network ones like "Workstation".

I don't have MW as shell atm...just in Startup.  I have disabled my un-needed services (most of them), but it actually increased the boot time!  I tried it first on another PC and it made it quicker, but on my cab it added ~10 seconds on    One of those sods law things I suppose...

[Silver]

Hmmm annoying! Could be that your installation is looking for services you've disabled and waiting on them a bit....

You've probably heard of the BootVis.exe tool from microsoft that allows you to optimise the boot sequence. They removed from the MS site saying that it was now an 'integral feature of XP and auto-optimises at set times' - however if you nab it off the web it allows you to run a 'trace boot' which records *everything* that the OS does at boot up and shows you on graphs  how long each bit takes. Its good for identifying problem drivers etc... (e.g. I had a driver that was hogging the system for 14 seconds - nothing else happened while it initialised. I changed the driver and viola - 12 seconds faster bootup)

[Minwah]

Hmmm annoying! Could be that your installation is looking for services you've disabled and waiting on them a bit....

You've probably heard of the BootVis.exe tool from microsoft that allows you to optimise the boot sequence. They removed from the MS site saying that it was now an 'integral feature of XP and auto-optimises at set times' - however if you nab it off the web it allows you to run a 'trace boot' which records *everything* that the OS does at boot up and shows you on graphs  how long each bit takes. Its good for identifying problem drivers etc... (e.g. I had a driver that was hogging the system for 14 seconds - nothing else happened while it initialised. I changed the driver and viola - 12 seconds faster bootup)

I'd heard of it but didn't realise you could do that with it...I'll give it a try, thanks!

[simplygriff]

Couple of Questions.

With the bootskin program can you use any image? OR do I have to make something special.  I'd try it out but I'm here at work and don't want to f anything up.

For those of you with loading meters do they actually work?  If so how?
-G

[CMIVXX]

Wow.   I must say, some of these are quite cool..   Couple of things though.

#1, StarDock (http://www.stardock.com) has a pretty good boot screen manager, if I remember correctly it was free and worked well with a nice GUI.  BUT there were 2 things wrong with it.  First your image could only be 16 colors and second it made one of my computers not want to boot.  But a quick safemode uninstall fixed that right up.

#2, How did some of you get such colorful boot screens?  I'm assuming this is something other than the standard windows boot screen functionality.  What proggy or util did you use?

Thanks!

[GameDork]

I tried the screen BarontheFirst posted:

Looked gret until the windows personal settings screen, THEN my pc REBOOTED!!

I had to boot into SAFE made to undo the screen.

Whats up with that?

BTW, I was using the Stardock program to do it.

I'm using XP Pro too.

[l8nite]

Using the system's "Hibernate" functionality would speed up boot time significantly (it writes memory to a disk file and then shuts off).  After re-activation it simply reload the disk file into active memory and voila, you're off and running again.  My little laptop goes from hibernated to fully running in about 12 seconds (timed on wall clock).  You can also change the hibernating/resuming screens to support some custom images.  I saw this on one of the example cabs, I can't remember which unfortunately.

-Shaun

[BarontheFirst]

I tried the screen BarontheFirst posted:

Looked gret until the windows personal settings screen, THEN my pc REBOOTED!!

I had to boot into SAFE made to undo the screen.

Whats up with that?

BTW, I was using the Stardock program to do it.

I'm using XP Pro too.

I have Xp Pro however I used the bootskin program. It doesn't change anything that might stop your pc from booting. From what I understand Stardock changes something and XP doesn't like it! Stardock probably works fine in Win 95/98. So I say try again with bootskin!

[GameDork]

I tried the screen BarontheFirst posted:

Looked gret until the windows personal settings screen, THEN my pc REBOOTED!!

I had to boot into SAFE made to undo the screen.

Whats up with that?

BTW, I was using the Stardock program to do it.

I'm using XP Pro too.

I have Xp Pro however I used the bootskin program. It doesn't change anything that might stop your pc from booting. From what I understand Stardock changes something and XP doesn't like it! Stardock probably works fine in Win 95/98. So I say try again with bootskin!

That's what I meant, I used the bootskin program from the StarDock Website

[Darkstalker]

I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

Turn off fast user switching, and setup an automatic login for a user.  This will skip the Fisher Price welcome screens and take you straight into WinXP.

[Thenasty]

Here is another I put together after gathering some pics...

[mamefreak2]

Anyone know of any Bootskin programs for Windows98.

[GreenKnight37]

Ohhhhhhh.....I love it!  You'll have to post how you got that set up, cause I must steal...I mean uhh...alright, steal it

[simplygriff]

I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

Turn off fast user switching, and setup an automatic login for a user.  This will skip the Fisher Price welcome screens and take you straight into WinXP.

WHere do I turn off fast user switching?
-G

[Darkstalker]

I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

Turn off fast user switching, and setup an automatic login for a user.  This will skip the Fisher Price welcome screens and take you straight into WinXP.

WHere do I turn off fast user switching?
-G

Control Panel, in the User Accounts section.  Select "Change the way Users Log On and Off", and it's pretty obvious from there.

[missioncontrol]

I like your 2nd boot screen thenasty where did you get it?

[Thenasty]

got some pics of here and check the links. Just put one and two together.

[simplygriff]

I wish I could get rid of the damn 'welcome', 'loading your personal settings' and 'saving your settings' screens tho - anyone done this?

Turn off fast user switching, and setup an automatic login for a user.  This will skip the Fisher Price welcome screens and take you straight into WinXP.

WHere do I turn off fast user switching?
-G

Control Panel, in the User Accounts section.  Select "Change the way Users Log On and Off", and it's pretty obvious from there.

Thank You.  My brain farted when I asked this question.

[MrBond]

Pretty sure I nabbed this off of http://www.themexp.org/
They have a nice way of setting up new boot screens without screwing your system over.  You basically add a line to c:\boot.ini, and to see if the boot works, windows gives you a list at bootup to choose which bootup screen you want.  If everything works as planned, you delete the original line and keep the new one...I found it straight forward.

[MrBond]

The directions I followed are attached (rename bootinstruct.png to bootinstruct.txt)