I found a way to completely hide BIOS boot screen!

[SadGamerGeek]

I'm always getting great advice from this forum, so I'm pleased I might finally be able to post something useful to others. This may be already well known, but I haven't seen it mentioned.....

As I've managed to hide all traces of Windows XP, the BIOS screen is the last thing on my set-up that really gives the game away that a normal PC is at the heart of my system. My BIOS doesn't allow a graphic to cover all the "detecting Hard Drive" type messages, so that wasn't an option. At the suggestion of a friend at work I did the following:

1. Added a (very cheap) PCI video card (already have AGP one) to PC
2. Set "Video Card" to "PCI" (instead of AGP) in BIOS set-up screen
3. Reboot PC

For me, that's all I had to do.  The BIOS messages (and Windows boot screen) are now output-ed only on the PCI card. As my monitor is still plugged into the AGP card, the screen stays completely blank until Windows starts (with MameWah as my shell). If I need to make any BIOS changes I'd need to plug the monitor into the PCI VGA output, but that will be an extremely rare occurrence.

I was expecting to need to disable the PCI card in Windows, but XP hasn't even noticed the addition of the card.

Result!

This is probably quite set-up dependant, but it worked a treat for me, and I would hope it will be useful info for others....

Cheers,

Richard

[Onid]

Good idea. Hope you remembered to turn off the Windows start chimes to as this is always a dead PC give away. 

[SadGamerGeek]

Good idea. Hope you remembered to turn off the Windows start chimes to as this is always a dead PC give away.

[cholin]

Very helpful!  Me likes!  Which card did you use?

[SadGamerGeek]

Very helpful!

[Chris]

Another quick and easy solution is to plug in an Act-Labs gun.  You won't see anything until the mouse drivers initialize.

--Chris

[jcrouse]

Another quick and easy solution is to plug in an Act-Labs gun.

[Thenasty]

Another quick and easy solution is to plug in an Act-Labs gun.

[jfunk]

Another way to hide the boot info is with a custom BIOS boot screen.  Finding a mobo that'll let you override the default can be difficult, though.  I found a GREAT one for my setup:

ASUS A7N8X-VM/400

Has the MyLogo2 ability (for a 256 color custom boot screen), onboard almost everything (for ease of use) and is a SOLID mobo as well.  Runs Athlons or Semprons..

Anyways, the bios boot screen stuff is SUPER easy.  My PC boots into MAMEWAH (through XP) and it's pretty darn hard to see the tell-tale signs of the computer/OS..

Thanx!

[chemame]

Another quick and easy solution is to plug in an Act-Labs gun.  You won't see anything until the mouse drivers initialize.

--Chris

Is this true only of the VGA version maybe? I run two act-labs svid-out guns, and I have my signal immediately upon boot, bios screens and all. The only time I DON'T get a signal through the gun video lines is if the USB is not properly connected.

Errr.... and when the svideo line gets pulled out of my video card, that is   

Che

[drunkatuw]

Another quick and easy solution is to plug in an Act-Labs gun.  You won't see anything until the mouse drivers initialize.

--Chris

Is this true only of the VGA version maybe? I run two act-labs svid-out guns, and I have my signal immediately upon boot, bios screens and all. The only time I DON'T get a signal through the gun video lines is if the USB is not properly connected.

Errr.... and when the svideo line gets pulled out of my video card, that is   

Che

I have 2 s-video guns and I do not see the bios or any boot screens.  The first thing I see is the windows splash screen.

[Scoobie]

Now, if only I could get rid of that windows splash/welcome screen...

[DaveJ-UK]

Also, how can I remove/change the windows chimes/noises on startup/shutdown?

Start / Settings / Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices

[jelwell]

THANKS!

This solution is the *BEST*. Not only did it hide my bios, it hid my Windows Startup screen (which I had already hacked to be a screenshot of one of my favorite games).

It took no effort - I did not have to make any BIOS changes since the PCI card already overrides the onboard video.

And the results are phenomenal! Now the first thing you see is MAMEWAH!
Thanks again. This post should be included in some sort of "How to hide windows" FAQ / Hall of Fame.
Joseph Elwell.