Boot Screens and other conundrums
Saturday, August 9, 2003 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Looking at this week's poll on sections people want, it is pretty obvious that people want Boot screens.
This puts WinCustomize into an odd position. Users often hear about "ripping" which is where someone takes another person's images and uses them in their own work without permission.
The problem with boot screens is that a "boot screen" is actually the Windows XP kernal, modified with new bitmaps, put into a ZIP file. Ignoring the support issues, there's the question: Is it okay for people to distribute the actual kernel of Windows XP in a zip file?
But this problem isn't just with boot screens. Logon screens often come with a replacement logonui.exe. It's the literal logonui.exe on your system that someone has modified and reuploaded. That's why WinCustomize's logon section uses LogonStudio because it has its own format .logonxp which allows people to make logons that don't have to include the actual logonui.exe.
And many "visual styles" that use .msstyles format include a file called shellstyles.dll which, again, is the literal .dll from a person's Windows directory.
In all these examples, these files are copyrighted by Microsoft. And I don't mean copyright in the same sense that an OS skin might be. I mean they are literally the code for the program. If Apple, for intance, gets mad about Aqua style skins on occasion, you can imagine how they would react if people were passing around the actual system files from MacOS X. Microsoft must be aware of this stuff but so far doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
As a skinning site, we want to have the kinds of sections people want to have. And in fact, every other major skinning site already has sections for these kinds of things. So we are torn on this situation. Our inclination is to put up a boot section since so many people want them and every other skin site already has them. But we're uneasy in doing this because of the potential copyright issues.
So that's where we are. Please no responses with "I don't know why anyone would want to replace their boot screen" or "We should put section X up instead." I think we can all agree that there is a large demand for boot screen. The question is what is the best course of action.
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Reply #2 Saturday, August 9, 2003 1:37 PM
Reply #3 Saturday, August 9, 2003 1:57 PM
Reply #4 Saturday, August 9, 2003 2:15 PM
Reply #5 Saturday, August 9, 2003 2:22 PM
So keep up the good work, and thanks for satisfy your users desires.
Reply #6 Saturday, August 9, 2003 2:39 PM
No reason to kill the idea totally without doing the homework first.
Reply #7 Saturday, August 9, 2003 2:57 PM
It does seem however that MS (so far, anyway) are not particularly bothered by this issue given the numbers of sites hosting boot screens.
Having said that I voted for *Trillian skins* anyway!
Reply #8 Saturday, August 9, 2003 3:32 PM
Anyway, if we're gonna have a boot screen section, maybe nocool's idea is the best. Just upload the images and let people install the software they need to make the image an actual bott screen. This way, the image will work with any OS.
Reply #9 Saturday, August 9, 2003 3:37 PM
Still, there are loadsa votes on Trillian skins, boot screens and msstyles. I think these all three are such a huge part of the skinning community, that they should absolutely come to Wincustomize soon.
Reply #10 Saturday, August 9, 2003 3:43 PM
Besides, as you mentioned, lots of other sites already have Boot Screen sections AND wincustomize.com already has the LoginStudio section.
BTW, my vote was for Trillian.
Dave
Reply #11 Saturday, August 9, 2003 3:44 PM
I voted Other.
Reply #12 Saturday, August 9, 2003 4:35 PM
How about something more useable. I voted for other. Hoping for Rainlendar, which I see almost everybody uses.
Reply #13 Saturday, August 9, 2003 5:56 PM
I'm not trying to endorse anything,but just a safer idea than literally hacking into the windows files and flat out replacing it (I did this first,and with DISASTEROUS results)
I'll try to post the link later,but you should find it if you search for it under any search enging using the program name.
Just trying to help anybody wanting a cool bootscreen to complete that Mac look or any look at that.
As for other Windows version users,I suggest we should have a separate boot section for them.As for anything to make that safer,I don't know anything now.
Reply #14 Saturday, August 9, 2003 5:57 PM
I just noticed Inno Logo for XP and W2K at Belchfire which apparently has a converter so that any image can be converted to a bootscreen and used with Inno Logo. From their site:
"Why use Inno Logo?
The Windows bootscreen is actually an executable file with a 16-colour bitmap using a custom colour-palette compiled into the file. Traditional bootscreens, such as all of those posted on Belchfire.net, are simply re-compiled executables containing a custom bitmap. When you change your bootscreen, you must actually replace the bootscreen executable with a new one. This opens up the possibility of loading a bad bootscreen, potentially rendering your system unbootable. Plus, Microsoft made changes to the bootscreen executable with the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows XP. So again, if you happen to load a non-SP1 compatible bootscreen on an XP + SP1 system, you can run into problems.
Inno Logo eliminates these problems. The bootscreen executable is never actually replaced. Plus, Inno Logo automatically detects which operating system you are using so there is never an issue of loading an incompatible bootscreen."
Link to website, info and app:
http://www.belchfire.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=24
I'm not advertising for either product and haven't yet tried either one, but it appears that there are products that can use images and convert them to bootscreens. So as bval says, there appears no need to download a hacked executable or a prefab bootscreen upload. And if these apps indeed do precisely what they say they do, that eliminates the concern about a hacked exe but also the concern about having a bootscreen section (or at least one using the .exe format at any rate.) But then would that be a wall section?
Or just images to use with these programs? (edited to added BootXP link and clarification)
Reply #15 Saturday, August 9, 2003 6:01 PM
as far as teh copyright infringement, yes, MS has a history of being linient, but if yu chose to do this you will be making an exception to your copyright disclaimer, which may lead to loopholes in your legal documents latter on and yu could wind up laying teh groiund work here for a much greater catastrophe. but i'm pesimistic.
Trillian skins would be useful, and they do ahve spot Number two in teh poll, they are free from teh copyright troubles you'll have with Boot Screens, and trillian is used by many epople. however, as a consequence,m you could wind up getting a heavy server load. i would suggest putting up a section taht immediately will not affect the server load too greatly, but can grow in teh future.
to please everyone across teh OS grid, i would suggest you make the new category summat that works for every OS instead of an OS specific one.
just my two cents.
Reply #16 Saturday, August 9, 2003 6:05 PM
I would love to download lots of cool bootscreens...but if it is illegal then I insist...don't do it just cause it is popular. To do so would be a complete contradiction. Just because M$ hasn't said anything in the past doesn't mean that they are giving their stamp of approval. With the way things go in Redmond, just as soon as we start enjoying something, someone there will find a problem with it. Keep your high standard and keep your relationship with M$ safe. Don't cheapen your values for the latest popular thing.
Reply #17 Saturday, August 9, 2003 6:14 PM
Reply #18 Saturday, August 9, 2003 6:18 PM
I Vote for Bootscreens,, AND a "better mouse trap",, a kick arse Bootscreen Tool....
Reply #19 Saturday, August 9, 2003 6:57 PM
On the legal issue though, sure MS doesn't apparently care about "hacking" of their files, but Stardock, to me, has had a respectful relationship with MS and I would think if we supported the hacked file route, it would "dirty" our relationship.
I suppose Stardock could choose to support one of the Boot programs mentioned here already, but then you force people to choose a certain program. Trillian, which came in second, is a far better option.
Reply #20 Saturday, August 9, 2003 7:36 PM
Couple of clarifications:
1) We don't know for sure if it's illegal. A lot of things on the net fall into a gray area. What do do know is that the the NT kernel belongs to Microsoft and it's definitely a "Gray area" thing. I mean, we live in a world where there are companies that *sell* programs that do nothing more than patch a system DLL. If Mcirosoft hasn't done anything about that, it's hard to know what they'd do about other things.
2) A boot section could have sub sections that support other OSes. 85% of users on WinCustomize.com have Windows 2000 or XP.
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Reply #1 Saturday, August 9, 2003 12:45 PM
Or maybe Stardock could release a utility to enable us to do this, such as logonstudio does for the logon screen.