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Author Topic: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot  (Read 69992 times)

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pmc

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #40 on: May 07, 2006, 01:20:34 pm »
Windows XP is just Win2k in sheeps clothing. 99% of the settings/controls are in the same places.

That's what I thought, except I couldn't find the Welcome screen / user settings noted above. Then I remembered that XP has that user picker login screen and 2K doesn't. I've never really used XP so I can never remember the subtle interface differences.

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

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #41 on: May 07, 2006, 05:13:35 pm »
Drop an ancient video card into one of your PCI slots (NOT the one next to your AGP slot though  !) and select PCI as your start-up graphics in the BIOS.
You'll have a black screen from your AGP card until XP (or in your case W2K) kicks in. :)
« Last Edit: May 07, 2006, 05:19:47 pm by Level42 »

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #42 on: May 08, 2006, 12:37:46 am »
Hey guys, Just made a little video of what the whole bootup process can become following the instructions here. It's about 70 mb, anyone have some extra space floating around to host this thing with? If not, where should I upload it to.

Thanks, Fred.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #43 on: May 09, 2006, 07:56:07 pm »
regarding boot times, XP is MUCH faster than 2k at booting up. (It was one of MS's design specs for XP over 2k)  So if its important to you, use XP instead of 2k.

A stripped down version of 9x can beat it, but its nowhere near as versatile/stable/supported/usable/compatible.

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.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #44 on: May 09, 2006, 09:41:07 pm »
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 :badmood:

M3talhead

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #45 on: May 10, 2006, 12:21:58 am »
Hey guys, Just made a little video of what the whole bootup process can become following the instructions here. It's about 70 mb, anyone have some extra space floating around to host this thing with? If not, where should I upload it to.

Thanks, Fred.

If you can slim it down a bit using a Divx encoder, I can host it. 70mb just seems a litle bloated.
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #46 on: May 10, 2006, 08:19:24 am »
GREAT idea!  I think I might try it! 

Drop an ancient video card into one of your PCI slots (NOT the one next to your AGP slot though  !) and select PCI as your start-up graphics in the BIOS.
You'll have a black screen from your AGP card until XP (or in your case W2K) kicks in. :)


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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #47 on: May 10, 2006, 11:23:28 am »
GREAT idea!  I think I might try it! 

Drop an ancient video card into one of your PCI slots (NOT the one next to your AGP slot though  !) and select PCI as your start-up graphics in the BIOS.
You'll have a black screen from your AGP card until XP (or in your case W2K) kicks in. :)


You may also have to go in and re-enable the original video after you put in a PCI card - some BIOS' disable the built-in after it detects another video card.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #48 on: May 11, 2006, 09:23:11 am »
GREAT idea!  I think I might try it! 

Drop an ancient video card into one of your PCI slots (NOT the one next to your AGP slot though  !) and select PCI as your start-up graphics in the BIOS.
You'll have a black screen from your AGP card until XP (or in your case W2K) kicks in. :)


This works absolutely perfect! No 31 kHz signal sent to the monitor until Windows boots!

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #49 on: May 12, 2006, 09:10:01 am »
Ok somehow I screwed up.  I normally have no problems with regedits (seriously, im not a newb!)  but for some reason now it doesn't start up explorer or mamewah.  Just black screen.  I can CTRL-ALT-DELETE and start either program from there and it is all fine, but won't do it automatically.  I followed the procedure step by step, but still nothing.  I tried to put my boot registry back to normal, but it still doesnt work.  Can anyone look at this and see what the problem is?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot]
@="SYS:Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\WOW\\boot"
"ScreenSaverActive"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"SCRNSAVE.EXE"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"Shell"="SYS:Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Winlogon"

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #50 on: May 12, 2006, 09:45:27 am »
Ok somehow I screwed up.  I normally have no problems with regedits (seriously, im not a newb!)  but for some reason now it doesn't start up explorer or mamewah.  Just black screen.  I can CTRL-ALT-DELETE and start either program from there and it is all fine, but won't do it automatically.  I followed the procedure step by step, but still nothing.  I tried to put my boot registry back to normal, but it still doesnt work.  Can anyone look at this and see what the problem is?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot]
@="SYS:Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\WOW\\boot"
"ScreenSaverActive"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"SCRNSAVE.EXE"="USR:Control Panel\\Desktop"
"Shell"="SYS:Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Winlogon"

Make sure that in the login options you have the Welcome screen turned off.  "User Accounts," "Change the Way Users Login," uncheck the welcome screen option.

That fixed the same problem for me.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #51 on: May 12, 2006, 11:49:07 am »
Yep..that did it...thanks!

wpcmame

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #52 on: May 12, 2006, 11:59:42 am »
Excellent summary.

You just forgot the simpliest way, hibernate.

In my cabinet I just press a button, shift+pause, to hibernate. Startup only take a few seconds and I'm right back where I left (in the frontend or in the game)

No need for any hiding/optimization.

M3talhead

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #53 on: May 12, 2006, 02:24:52 pm »
I shot a small video of my arcade's bootup this afternoon. I've had it setup this way since about June of last year. The only things left to take care of now is hide the mouse pointer during startup and to install a PCI video card.






Edit: I created a new video thats a little easier to understand

http://www.envy-online.net/video/startup_352x240.mpg
« Last Edit: May 14, 2006, 07:15:52 am by M3talhead »
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #54 on: May 12, 2006, 04:57:15 pm »
Very cool! Like the music, man that's awesome. Once you put the second vid card in there it will look even better! I will make a new boot up movie when I finish with my R-Type cab, and this one will be on an arcade monitor!

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #55 on: May 12, 2006, 05:20:17 pm »
Nice! On a side note, if you turn off the image stabilization on your camcorder, it should eliminate the scan lines on the monitor you are filming, and give you a clear picture.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #56 on: May 12, 2006, 07:37:10 pm »
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 :badmood:

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.
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #57 on: May 13, 2006, 02:17:52 am »
I'm having the exact same problem.  I have to manually load up explorer after I exit Mamewah.  I've tried everything.  When I hit ESC...it just goes to my desktop with no explorer.  Am I supposed to be using the menu to exit?


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.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #58 on: May 13, 2006, 02:45:20 am »
When you setup a program as shell it is REPLACING explorer.  Unless the program is specifically coded to manually load explorer on exit, you'll get a blank desktop when you exit a shelled program. 

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #59 on: May 13, 2006, 04:40:23 am »
Yes, but generaly the idea is that Mamewah is configured to START explorer.exe upon exiting Mamewah. And that's not working.

Minwah where are you, we need your help !

To M3talhead:
No game intro movies on your Mamewah screen ? Guests LOVE that (and me too, it tells you so much more than a still image).

Nice video, my startup is about the same now. The idea of putting a PCI card next to your AGP is not mine or new, but I've tried it in the past and works brillianly.

M3talhead, I'm not into metal at all, but you incorporated the style pefectly on your cab. However, we do share a great taste in beer: Duvel !

Also, on the flickering of the screen: I haven't tried filming my cab, but since arcade monitors are running at 60Hz, and PAL cams are on 50Hz you can expect this flickering to happen. Are you in a PAL country ?
« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 04:44:49 am by Level42 »

Capthowdy

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #60 on: May 13, 2006, 07:09:18 am »
Yes, but generaly the idea is that Mamewah is configured to START explorer.exe upon exiting Mamewah. And that's not working.

Minwah where are you, we need your help !


HA!!  I've figured it out!!!  It's 7:00AM and I've been up all friggin night!!  But I got it to work!


mamewah_v161\ctrlr\default.ini

************
EXIT_WITH_CHOICE      
EXIT_TO_WINDOWS         "DIK_ESCAPE"
EXIT_AND_RUN_APP      
EXIT_AND_REBOOT         
EXIT_AND_SHUTDOWN      
************

guess where "DIK_ESCAPE" needs to be!  That's right...make it look like this:

************
EXIT_WITH_CHOICE      
EXIT_TO_WINDOWS         
EXIT_AND_RUN_APP      "DIK_ESCAPE"
EXIT_AND_REBOOT         
EXIT_AND_SHUTDOWN      
************

TADA!!!  I'm delirious!  I'm going to bed!!!    :dizzy:

M3talhead

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #61 on: May 13, 2006, 07:36:24 am »
Yes, but generally the idea is that Mamewah is configured to START explorer.exe upon exiting Mamewah. And that's not working.

Minwah where are you, we need your help !

To M3talhead:
No game intro movies on your Mamewah screen ? Guests LOVE that (and me too, it tells you so much more than a still image).

Nice video, my startup is about the same now. The idea of putting a PCI card next to your AGP is not mine or new, but I've tried it in the past and works brilliantly.

M3talhead, I'm not into metal at all, but you incorporated the style perfectly on your cab. However, we do share a great taste in beer: Duvel !

Also, on the flickering of the screen: I haven't tried filming my cab, but since arcade monitors are running at 60Hz, and PAL cams are on 50Hz you can expect this flickering to happen. Are you in a PAL country ?

I've been living in Belgium for the last 2 years (Limburg Province) and picked this old MK3 cab up back in Dec of '04 from a local amusement vendor. I thought about doing a startup video a while ago but could never find one I liked enough.

As for the scan lines from the camcorder, I bought it not long ago and am still figuring out how to work all the bells and whistles. I found out about the PCI tip years ago (I used it in my first cab) but have just been to lazy to grab one off ebay.

And you think the Duvel mirror is cool, check this out. I toured the brewery in May of '05 (followed by the Guinness brewery and Jameson distillery in Dublin).
« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 10:47:52 am by M3talhead »
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #62 on: May 13, 2006, 12:00:08 pm »
I shot a small video of my arcade's bootup this afternoon. I've had it setup this way since about June of last year. The only things left to take care of now is hide the mouse pointer during startup and to install a PCI video card.




That's very cool!  I love the War Games intro!  You gave me the idea.  Now I'm going to have to go pull the "Would you like to play a game?" line for my startup! :)

I'm a little confused on the sequence you show us though.  Can you explain it a bit.  It looks to me that you basically start up, shut back down, then start it up again.  But there are differences between the two startup sequences that I don't understand.  The first time there's "VERSUS" screen and I hear the "Greetings Professor Falken" line before the front end loads.  Then you shut it down and start it back up again.  This time there's no VERSUS screen, I see the regular Windows logo splash screen with the bar at the bottom for just a second, and I don't hear the Professor Falken sound.  Why the difference in the two startup sequences?

Just curious.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #63 on: May 13, 2006, 12:58:41 pm »
I think he's doing a Hybernate the 2nd time.

To Capthowdy:

 :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:
 :applaud: :applaud: :applaud: :applaud: :applaud:

Man do I love this forum !!! It's threads like these that make it shine !!!!

I've tried it and it works YIHA !

To M3talhead:
Hey, you're "around the corner" for me. I live near Rotterdam in Holland :) !
Touring the Duvel brewery (or any other Belgian brewery actualy) is still on my wish list :)

Back on topic: I didn't actualy meant a intro video for your cab, but the "intro" video's for each game. (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=45467.0)
« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 01:17:43 pm by Level42 »

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #64 on: May 13, 2006, 01:25:26 pm »
The first bootup was just to give an example on how creative you can get with your bootlogo and how long it takes to boot with the settings described in this thread.

The second bootup was to demonstrate how much time you can save by enabling hibernation in WinXP (v.s. cold booting every time). While you do miss out on the VersuS faux bios checker and "Greetings professor Falken" intro, you save a few seconds getting into your frontend. Usually when I have friends come over who have never seen it before, I dont start it coming out of hibernation. That way they get the whole effect.
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #65 on: May 13, 2006, 03:27:44 pm »
Ah, cool, thanks for the explanation.  I understand now.  Thanks!

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #66 on: May 13, 2006, 04:02:35 pm »
Have mine working good except no mouse cursor when Mamewah exits and Explorer starts....or it is invisible.  If i move down to what I think is the start button and click around it will activate.  Not sure why this is happening???

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #67 on: May 13, 2006, 04:28:42 pm »
It's happening because you can't really kill the cursor, you can only make it invisible.  Well, that's not entirely true.... there are ways to totally kill the cursor, but I wouldn't reccomend it because it's not something that you can just turn right back on when you need to muck around in windows. 

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #68 on: May 13, 2006, 05:08:29 pm »
Ok so how do I make the cursor not invisible when Mamewah exits and explorer starts??

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #69 on: May 13, 2006, 05:28:41 pm »
Mamewah should be doing it for you.  ....

That is unless mamewah isn't what's hiding the cursor.  If you did something silly like replace the default cursor with a transparent one, then you'll have to replace it back after mamewah exits. 

I think someone wrote a utility to do it manually though... programatically speaking it isn't hard to do at all.  If not let me know, it'd literally take like 5 minutes to whip up a command line utility. 

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #70 on: May 13, 2006, 10:44:37 pm »
Not to be a jackass, but anybody have any info about doing the same thing for windows 98?

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #71 on: May 14, 2006, 12:38:09 am »
Not to be a jackass, but anybody have any info about doing the same thing for windows 98?

Is this my first chance to say "read the Wiki"?

I think it is ;)

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #72 on: May 14, 2006, 07:18:05 am »
I shot a small video of my arcade's bootup this afternoon. I've had it setup this way since about June of last year. The only things left to take care of now is hide the mouse pointer during startup and to install a PCI video card.






Edit: I created a new video thats a little easier to understand

http://www.envy-online.net/video/startup_352x240.mpg
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #73 on: May 21, 2006, 03:39:26 pm »
Yeah, found back my old PCI video card and installed it. Perfect ! Although even the WinXP bootscreen (the altered one) is not showing now, but I prefer this because now I do not get any BIOS screens. As with any brilliant idea: it's simple and works great !

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #74 on: May 21, 2006, 07:59:30 pm »
It's my understanding that it doesn't even have to actually WORK, it just has to occupy the slot so that your PC continues to try to output to it while it's booting.  I could be wrong on this though, as I don't have a non-working PCI video card to test this out. 
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #76 on: May 22, 2006, 03:20:57 pm »
It's my understanding that it doesn't even have to actually WORK, it just has to occupy the slot so that your PC continues to try to output to it while it's booting.  I could be wrong on this though, as I don't have a non-working PCI video card to test this out. 
Guess it depends to what extend it doesn't work. If there's a defect in the video part of the card, it should be fine. If it's not communicating on the PCI bus, I wonder if the trick will work. However, can't imagine someone not having an old card lying around, or being able to get one for free or nearly free...

The very last thing I need to do is remove the cursor....know how to do it. I think I will make a little black cursor, that won't be visible at start-up, but will be with a blue or white bachground.

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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #77 on: May 23, 2006, 09:43:55 pm »
If you make one, can you up it to the Wiki?
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #78 on: May 23, 2006, 10:54:06 pm »
I'm not sure if anybody mentioned this yet, but Tom from GameEx has a cool little program called Instant Sheller. It can be used with any frontend, and creates a bootscreen of your choice, hides the mouse within windows and all that jazz. You guys may want to check it out.

http://tomspeirs.com/gameex/shell.htm
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Re: Summary: Hiding XP / Booting to your Emulator / Optimizing boot
« Reply #79 on: May 24, 2006, 08:56:30 am »
HHmmm, have to give this a shot looks interesting. I'll post my results when I get a chance to try it out...
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