Customize Windows | More Hack

More how to Hack Windows 95...

The easiest way to thwart these Windoze 95 startup and shut down screens is to go to http://www.windows95.com/apps/  and check out their programs. But we're hackers, so we like to do things ourselves. So here's how to do this without using a canned program.

We start by finding the MSPaint program. It's probably under the accessories folder. But just in case you're like me and keep on moving things around, here's the fail-safe program finding routine:

1) Click "Start" on the lower left corner of your screen.
2) Click "Windows Explorer"
3) Click "Tools"
4) Click "Find"
5) Click "files or folders"
6) After "named" type in "MSPaint"
7) After "Look in" type in 'C:"
8) Check the box that says "include subfolders"
9) Click "find now"
10) Double click on the icon of a paint bucket that turns up in a window. This loads the paint program.
11) Within the paint program, click "file"
12) Click "open"

OK, now you have MSPaint. Now you have a super easy way to create your new bootup screen:

13) After "file name" type in c:\windows\logos.sys. This brings up the graphic you get when your computer is ready to shut down saying "It's now safe to turn off your computer." This graphic has exactly the right format to be used for your startup graphic. So you can play with it any way you want (so long as you don't do anything on the Attributes screen under the Images menu) and use it for your startup graphic.

14) Now we play with this picture. Just experiment with the controls of MSPaint and try out fun stuff.

15) When you decide you really like your picture (fill it with frightening hacker stuph, right?), save it as c:\logo.sys. This will overwrite the Windows startup logo file. From now on, any time you want to change your startup logo, you will be able to both read and write the file logo.sys.

16. If you want to change the shut down screens, they are easy to find and modify using MSPaint. The beginning shutdown screen is named c:\windows\logow.sys. As we saw above, the final "It's now safe to turn off your computer" screen graphic is named c:\windows\logos.sys.

17. To make graphics that will be available for your wallpaper, name them something like c:\windows\evilhaxor.bmp (substituting your filename for "exilhaxor" -- unless you like to name your wallpaper "evilhaxor.")

********************************************************
Evil Genius tip: The Microsoft Windows 95 startup screen has an animated bar at the bottom. But once you replace it with your own graphic, that animation is gone. However, you can make your own animated startup screen using the shareware program BMP Wizard. Some download sites for this goodie include:
http://www.pippin.com/English/ComputersSoftware/
        Software/Windows95/graphic.htm 
http://search.windows95.com/apps/editors.html 
http://www.windows95.com/apps/editors.html 
Or you can download the program LogoMania, which automatically resizes any bitmap to the correct size for your logon and logoff screens and adds several types of animation as well. You can find it at
ftp.zdnet.com/pcmag/1997/0325/logoma.zip 

More Hack