Teach you how to DIY a WinXP splash screen

There are many people who like to change the WinXP splash screen. I hope that I can use my own map as the startup screen. However, many people always get a black screen when they use their own pictures as the startup screen. What is going on? Very simple, because the picture does not meet the requirements of the WinXP startup image.

Basic Requirements

To replace WinXP's splash screen with your own image, you must first understand the basic requirements of this image. This image should be 640 x 480 pixels in size and use any 16-color BMP image.

Problem Critical

After reading the basic requirements, do you think it is very simple? However, the pictures made by many friends cannot be displayed normally at startup. Why is this? Because the 16 colors used in this image must be the index color. Here's how to make such a picture through Photoshop, so that interested parties can refer to it.

Step 1: Run PhotoShop, click “File” → “New”, and enter the name in the dialog box that opens (Figure 1), such as Boot, select width (640 pixels), height (480). Pixel), the color mode uses the default 8 bits, click the "OK" button.

Set the specified size

Step 2: Click "Image" → "Mode" → "Index Color" (Figure 2), click the "OK" button to continue step.

Step 3: Open your favorite picture. If the image size is not 640×480 pixels, you can click “Image” → “Image Size” in the main Photoshop window (Figure 3). Then make adjustments.

adjust the picture size to require

Step 4: Copy your favorite picture to create the picture above, click on "File" → "stored" in the "Format" Select BMP and click the "Save" button to save. Next, set the “Depth” to 4 bits in the open BMP options window (as shown in Figure 4), and click the “OK” button to save.

Note the choice of color depth

In this way, a picture that meets the requirements is obtained, put it under the C drive and set it as the startup screen. The whole production process is very simple, but the key is to use the color must be the index color, otherwise it can not be displayed normally at startup. For information on how to set up your own map as the splash screen, see the article "Zero Pain Replacement System Startup Screen" in the 23rd issue of OS Application Digest 2004.