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Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO
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1993-06-01
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Windows 3.x lets you customize many things, such as window
size, location, colors, wallpaper, and icons. However,
there's no obvious way to modify the start-up screen unless
you know how.
First, a bit of background: Windows' start-up image is not a
separate file; it's an integral part of the WIN.COM program
that loads the environment. When you first install Windows
3.0, the SETUP program builds WIN.COM by concatenating three
other files. The first, WIN.CNF, loads the Windows software.
The second, xxxLOGO.LGO (where xxx stands for a graphics
adapter VGALOGO.LGO, for instance), contains the program
that displays the logo. Finally, there's the start-up image
itself, the file you're going to replace.
This third file, a graphic image, has the extension RLE, for
run length encoded. This extension signifies a compressed
graphics file format that Windows' Paintbrush doesn't
support. Fortunately, a number of other programs do support
it, including utilities that can translate Paintbrush BMP
and other common formats into RLE files; at least two of
them, PaintShop and WinGif, are available as shareware. As
you create a masterpiece for your start-up screen, keep two
restrictions in mind. First, Windows can handle only 4-bit
(16-color) start-up images; that driver for your 256-color
super-VGA board doesn't kick in until the start-up screen is
gone. Second, your RLE file can't be larger than 59K;
anything bigger, when you add it to WIN.CNF and the RLE
file, will give you a COM file that's larger than 64K, and
DOS won't be able to load it. This second restriction will
be a problem only if you want a highly detailed start-up
image.
To create your custom start-up screen, use the following
procedure:
1. Find WIN.CNF and your LGO file, which may not be on your
hard disk. If you can't find them in your WIN directory,
you'll have to expand them (they ship in compressed form)
from the distribution disks. The expansion utility,
EXPAND.EXE, is also on the distribution floppies. Its syntax
is simple: EXPAND <source> <destination>, as in EXPAND
A:WIN.CNF C:\WIN\WIN.CNF.
2. Find a graphics image you want to use, or create one in
Paintbrush or another program, making sure the image size
matches your screen resolution. If you use Paintbrush,
select OptionsoImage Attributes to set the proper image size
in pixels (640 by 400 for EGA, 640 by 480 for VGA).
3. Convert the image from its source format (BMP, PCX, TIF,
or whatever) to RLE, using any utility that can handle this
translation.
4. Create your new COM file with the following DOS-line
command, where xxx is the first three letters of your LGO
file's name, such as EGA, VGA: COPY
WIN.CNF/b+xxxLOGO.LGO/b+YOURLOGO.RLE/b NEWWIN.COM/b. The /b
switch tells DOS to treat these as binary files and to
ignore any end-of-file markers it finds. After you've loaded
Windows with NEWWIN a few times and feel comfortable with
it, you might want to change its name to WIN.COM.
Mark N. Martin
Baltimore, Maryland
Editor's Note: You can have lots of fun opening Windows with
this technique. One of my favorite screens is an image of an
ordinary Windows desktop, flipped upside down with the aid
of a drawing program. If someone is watching me load
Windows, I curse and slap the side of the monitor just
before the image appears to right itself.
Besides the shareware conversion utilities Mr. Martin
mentions, a few commercial ones such as Hijaak and The
Graphics Link can convert other graphic formats to
Microsoft's RLE. There are also several other shareware
utilities; check your favorite BBS or on-line service for
information.
Title: A Good Windows First Impression
Category: MSC
Issue Date: May, 1992
Editor: Brett Glass
Supplementary Files: None
Filename: P5MSC003.TIP