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Warning about custom boot screens and SP2!

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PCGUY112887

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2003
Location
Illinois
After noticeing that the SP2 boot screen didn't say Home or Pro anymore, I decided to change the bootscreen. I download a very popular bootscreen (third on themexp) and even though it said it was compatable with SP2, it really wasn't. I ended up having to update my old computer to SP2, copy the original ntoskrnl.exe and ntfs.sys to another HDD and put it in my computer, and use the recovery console to replace the files. Every time I tryed any of the "SP2 ready" boot screens, it would corrupt the ntfs.sys

Be warned!
 
yup style and theme xp are not compatible with sp2 whether it be the beta or the final. I tried it with sp2 rc2 and it corrupted windows.
 
Does changing the bootscreen through the registry still work? I dont want to screw up my new comp by updating.
 
PCGUY112887 said:
After noticeing that the SP2 boot screen didn't say Home or Pro anymore, I decided to change the bootscreen.

Uhm, so it just says windows XP now? no pro or home? why would they go and do that?
 
Dunno you tell me, it happened on both of my boxes after installing SP2 from M$ site.
yup style and theme xp are not compatible with sp2 whether it be the beta or the final. I tried it with sp2 rc2 and it corrupted windows.
I was going it manually, not with style xp or anything. For some reason I could never get style xp to run boot screens right... the loading bar would always end up in some funky place.
 
Since SP2 includes a 'firewall' etc just as the original XP Pro did, perhaps they are migrating XP Home and XP Pro into one OS. Speculating of course but why else? The two products are not really all that different in the first place.

Z
 
Zuzzz said:
Since SP2 includes a 'firewall' etc just as the original XP Pro did, perhaps they are migrating XP Home and XP Pro into one OS. Speculating of course but why else? The two products are not really all that different in the first place.

Z

yeah, but waht about all those ppl that paid more for the PRO? wouldn't they feel a little ripped off?
 
try making a xp sp2 home machine join a domain... then tell me the results...
 
dre... Well since its not an 'official' announcement I am of course speculating. Speculating further I would guess the reason they didnt actually 'announce' it was for that VERY reason. I know when I check the System Properties in the SP2 it DOES state 'Windows XP Professional' and 'Service Pack 2'. Could be just the splash screen has changed.

Z
 
Zuzzz said:
dre... Well since its not an 'official' announcement I am of course speculating. Speculating further I would guess the reason they didnt actually 'announce' it was for that VERY reason. I know when I check the System Properties in the SP2 it DOES state 'Windows XP Professional' and 'Service Pack 2'. Could be just the splash screen has changed.

Z


Ok, i see what you are saying... could be true.
 
My guess is that they just changed the splash screen...

I need to find a way to fix that though because that boot screen makes me angry

Has anybody tried resource hacker yet?? that's how i used to do it, but I can't afford to mess up this computer cause it's the ony on I have right now
 
Maybe they just unified the startup for the firewall security & settings. It isn't Home or Pro until the GUI loads.

Edit: I know the firewall kicks in faster now so the little bit of exposure before Windows is started. Can be eliminated, or lessened.
 
Last edited:
yes the firewall feature was present, but not used unless activated by the user, not as simple to use, and not as good as the sp2 version.
 
I thought the lack of a firewall and some other features were the differences between 'Home' and 'Pro'...

Z
 
There is quite a few differences between Home and Pro.
Domians, the groups policy editor and the abilty to remote another system (on home you can only accept remotes). I know there is more, but to me the most significant differences.
 
I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!!!

Basically, the update installs the same files for both XP Pro and XP Home (well it installs more files for home and it takes about 15min longer, but i think that's just the computer i installed it on), and because microsoft is lazy they only included one boot screen for both platforms.
 
iwillburnbush said:
I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!!!

Basically, the update installs the same files for both XP Pro and XP Home (well it installs more files for home and it takes about 15min longer, but i think that's just the computer i installed it on), and because microsoft is lazy they only included one boot screen for both platforms.
It's always been that way with XP. I'm on SP1 right now and the notskrnl.exe contains the bitmaps for both Home and Professional.

I've always just made a copy of ntoskrnl.exe and named it kernel.exe. Then I open it in Resource Hacker and replace the bitmaps with my own to make a custom bootscreen.

Then I edit boot.ini to say "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /kernel=kernel.exe"

Dose this method work for SP2?
 
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