One question:
Everything that is suggested works great, except when I escape mamewah, explorer doesn't start. I've tried entering the full path in mamewah.ini, but didn't help.
I've tried changing exit_action itno run_app and later also windows but this doesn't help either.
I'm not certain what exactly is happening in your setup, just figured I'd throw in what I need to do when running my PVR software as a shell so the wife can't muck around in there - I CTRL-ALT-DEL and have to manually run explorer.exe - again, no idea from a simple perusal of this thread, just throwing that out there.
Guys, I am updating the WIKI at the moment. I think it would be a good idea to provide a cursor file as well, and I have made my own already. Anybody have a good place to host it that won't be down? Saint maybe? The file is a couple of KB, so I am sure it won't be a bandwith killer. Let me know so I can add a link to download the cursor directly from the Wiki.
Throw your cursor file (or whatever cursor file you like to use that you have permission from the author to use) up on the Wiki itself. You can upload pics to the Wiki and put them into the Wiki notes right alongside the part where you want to introduce that aspect. For examples, see the individual jukebox pages and check the code for how to use a pic in the Wiki.
For what it's worth, Bootskin repeatedly blue-screened my machine. I think it's because I previously mucked with the bootscreen using TweakUI and/or the Registry so it's likely that I have conflict and need to straighten that out first.
Anyone know if Phoenix Award BIOS supports a BIOS boot screen? I'm using it with an MSI nForce2 board. I don't see an option to change the boot screen.
-pmc
I'd wager big money on conflicts between the two progs you used for bootscreen customization. I ended up just doing a format and fresh install due to the exact same situation you're describing.
AFAIK, only the Asus boards supported the BIOS boot screen, I don't recall MSI boards EVER having that capability. There were only a few that did, but newer boards may now support that capability, although you prolly won't want to buy a new board just for that. See the PCI video card trick instead.
For thoses really willing to play around, you can use a free util called nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/ - which will create a whole new XP installation set/bootable CD based on your current XP cd, removing everything that you choose. This is hardcore feature removal - you can strip several hundred megs off the XP cd - but will give you the smallest/fastest xp build. I've used it for creating XP builds to run on itx-boards with only 64/128megs ram quite successfully.
To learn a bit more about what you're fiddling around with, check out
www.msfn.org for what nLite is doing and/or is capable of doing. The creator of nLite is (was?) a member of msfn and created the program to simplify some of the steps and make everything easier.
I wish there was a way to get rid of the mouse, floppy and or keyboard. Some of the older pc's complain when you remove them. Especially with the floppy even if you disable it in the bios
Make sure that you didn't just disable the floppy drive in the BIOS, make sure you also disable the "floppy drive seek" as well, otherwise all you've done is tell your PC that every time you boot up, you want it to go look for something you unplugged. Make sure to do both things.