Settings for a logo.sys graphic?
Lim-Dul
I would like to know the settings for creating my own startup and
shutdown screens for Win95. I know that the exact files are logo.sys,
logow.sys and logos.sys. I also know they are actually just bitmaps; I
don't, however, know exactly what thier exact size and color depth should
be. Is there anything else I need to know when making a new screen (other
than backing up the originals?). Thanks in adavance.
_____
vca...@ucsd.edu
http://sdcc10.ucsd.edu/~vcampos
Visit my web page to view my original artwork!
Updated frequently.
Victor Story
REPLY:
Some collected notes:
win95 logo.sys features:
about 129078 k
size 320x400 (shrunk down from 640x480)
bmp uncompressed
resolution 96x97 dpi
--
The default logo.sys is embedded in IO.SYS file. If you cannot find
logo.sys in your drives, including the host drive, chances
are Win95 is using the logo that is embedded in io.sys as your start
up logo. In this case, you don't have logo.sys to backup. Simply place
the new logo.sys in the root directory of your boot (host) drive.
Logo.sys in the root directory will take precedence over the one
embedded in io.sys file. To get back to the original win95 logo,
simply rename the logo.sys to other name.
--
Three files comprise the start and shutdown screens: logo.sys (start)
which is an internal system file and logow.sys (wait) and logos.sys
(shut off) which are located in the Windows folder. Remove the later
two files to a safe place, or remane them, so you don't overwrite
them. Replacement screens must be in a .bmp format and be sized or
resized to 320 X 400 X 256 colors. For full details on customizing
these files, see the FAQ at: http://www.jokewallpaper.com/
Logo.sys does need to go into the root boot-up directory/folder. BUT
-- if your boot-drive is compressed, logo.sys needs to be placed in
the uncompressed drive (i.e. with only 1 hard drive (C), if it is
compressed, place logo.sys in root directory for drive D). This will
take care of the original question/problem.
Here's a page that discusses how
to make the logo.sys file animated at startup:
http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/win95logo.html
The above address also leads to over 400 pre-made start-up screens.
Much in this message comes from that site.
---------
You can download logomania at
ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/pcmag/1997/0325/logoma.zip (640KB)
Download many startup screens at:
http://www.archieves.com/win/startup.shtml
Don't like the logos when you start and turn off your computer?
You can change them, in fact, you can set it so that they change every
time you restart the computer by downloading "Logo Randomizer" at
http://www.tech.mtu.edu/~dbwest/logorandomizer.html. It also gives you
the option of changing the background for your desktop.
---------
Windows 95 Animated Logo Screens
As many people are no doubt aware, anyone can replace the startup
logo screen shown by Windows 95® with one of their own, the only
problem has been that it isn't widely known how to create an animated
startup screen (Those pretty moving blue bars at the bottom of the
standard screen.) While some people may not feel this is important,
and many simply disable the logo screen completely, with my extremely
unstable system (Strange Hardware), it is important to me to know the
that the system is still doing something rather than just sitting
there during startup. Until now this has left me STUCK with the
default startup logo which has bothered me because I KNOW I'm running
Window 95®, and don't need to be reminded every time I boot (Happens
quite often). As it turns out, creating an animated startup screen is
a rather simple though time consuming task.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's required:
1.The desire to get rid of that annoying Windows Logo. 2.A picture to
animate, this should be a 256 Color 320 x 400 Windows BMP, this seems
a strange size because the startup screen uses a mode that puts that
resolution on the screen. I tend to do my designing on a 640 x 400
image then scale it using a graphics utility, this makes it easier to
get the proportions correct. 3.A graphics Utility that can directly
edit the Palette of an image. (I have yet to decide what is the best
for this, I've been trying out a few different ones, and think the
final choice will be either Paint Shop Pro or LView Pro. PSP has the
advantage because you can edit the image with it while LView Pro has
the better image manipulation tools.) 4.A hex editor. or the XrX
Animated Logo Utility (822KB) which allows you to view animations
without rebooting, and does all the hex editing automatically, check
out the XrX Animated Logo Tools Page for more info. 5.Patience,
getting all the right colors in all the right places can be time
consuming.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steps to create Animated Logo:
First a word about the 'animation' this is not true animation, this is
palette animation, this means that only the colors of areas on the
screen change, not the shape of the areas. This is accomplished by the
manipulation of the pictures palette, so far I have got 2 scenarios
figured out, the first simply rotates the palette from a selected
starting point through to the end continuously, this is the method
used by the default startup logo. The second seems to step through the
palette to the end and back again. Designing an animation using this
technique can be a bit of a challenge.
1.Create, borrow or whatever, just get yourself a picture to animate.
A good place to get some ideas is Steve Kremer's Windows 95 & Mac Joke
Wallpaper etc. Page One of my first attempts was a bitmap of flowers,
simple but appealing. I found a JPG that's 640 x 480 TrueColor.
2.Correct the size of your picture. Resize the image to 320 x 400
using your choice of tools.
3.You will need a few unused colors in the palette to use for your
animation. So at this point you want to reduce the color depth of your
image to something under 256. I'm going to use the same kind of
animation that the default logo uses at the bottom of my image so I'm
going to need 20 colors. (If you count you'll find that there are 20
boxes across the screen) So I need to reduce the number of colors in
my image to 236. I find that doing this step after resizing generally
results in a better image.
4.At this point I generally go in and set the unused
colors I'm going to be animating (Must be at the END of the palette)
to unique colors that are not used anywhere else in the picture. This
makes it easier to do the editing because some editors will use the
first matching color in the palette rather than the one selected. This
can get quite frustrating, you think you've set that last box to a
specific color to be animated, and it never changes because it
actually got set to a non animated color earlier in the palette.
5.Now add the elements to be animated to your picture, in this case I
am putting 20 boxes across the bottom of the picture, and setting them
to each successive color I set in the previous step.
6.Now go back and set those colors to what you actually want them to
be. In my case I started with black, faded to green and back to black
in those last 20 palette entries.
7.Save your picture as a 256 color Windows Bitmap (.BMP), it will have
to be renamed later.
8.Load the file you just saved into your Hex Editor. Changing the
following Bytes:
Offset: Hex 32, Decimal 50 - Change this byte to the number of the
FIRST palette entry that you wish to animate. In my case because I am
animating 20 entries, this would be Hex EC, Decimal 236.
Offset: Hex 33, Decimal 51 - For standard palette rotation this
should be zero (00), for back and forth action this should be one
(01).
Setting this to other values does strange things, I am not even sure
of the back and forth action of the 1 setting. When I have these other
values figured out I'll post the results, or if anyone else has these
figured out, let me know.
9.Save your original LOGO.SYS if any.
10.Rename your file to LOGO.SYS
(This is in the Root Directory of your boot drive (If your boot drive
is compressed LOGO.SYS can be found on the HOST drive) by the way.)
11.Reboot. If your lucky everything should work just the way you want.
This is a 'simple' example, and most of the grudge work can be done
automatically using a small utility I've created, XrX Addbar, which
adds the animated bar to the bottom of an appropriately sized bitmap,
to download this and other XrX Tools, check out the XrX Animated Logo
Tools page.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good luck creating your own logo's, I wouldn't mind seeing other
peoples work, or if you have any comments you can send me E-Mail.
Karl McMurdo (XrX) - kmcm...@nucleus.com
Check out some Sample Logos (Over 400 and counting)
One final note here, I got serious about figuring out the animated
logo screen after seeing some interesting themes available on the net
for MS Plus, and deciding that a theme in my mind couldn't be complete
without a tied in startup screen. One of the better sources I've found
for themes is Dale's Window 95® Theme Page With new themes being added
all the time...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to the efforts of Katsuji ISOBE kat...@cyborg.or.jp this
page is now available translated into Japanese.<Picture: Japanese
Translation>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instructions
Method 1
Please download the files you want to a temporary directory. Click the
right mouse button and choose 'Save link as...'.
1. For startup screen, first rename 'c:\logo.sys' to 'logo.bak'. (If
you cannot see the file 'logo.sys' listed in c:\, open Windows
Explorer and pull down View menu. Choose Options, click View menu,
check 'Show all files' and uncheck 'Hide MS-DOS file extensions...').
2. Afterwards, move 'logo.sys' from the temporary directory to c:\.
Just restart the computer and you should see the new Anime logo
screen.
3. For shutdown screen, first rename 'c:\windows\logos.sys' to
'logos.bak'. (Refer to the above paragraph if you cannot see the file
'logos.sys' listed in c:\windows.)
4. Then, move 'logos.sys' from the temporary directory to c:\windows.
There you go.
5. There is also a waiting screen that will sometimes appear before
the shutdown screen. For waiting screen, first rename
'c:\windows\logow.sys' to 'logow.bak'. (Refer to the above paragraph
if you cannot see the file 'logow.sys' listed in c:\windows.)
6. Then, move 'logow.sys' from the temporary directory to c:\windows.
You are done!
7. To switch back to the previous logo screens, delete 'c:\logo.sys',
'c:\windows\logow.sys' as well as 'c:\windows\logos.sys', and rename
'logo.bak', 'logow.bak', 'logos.bak' to 'logo.sys', 'logow.sys',
'logos.sys' respectively.
Method 2
If you download the 'All Three' ones, you can follow the installation
instructions in 'logoread.txt' and use 'install.bat' inside the zip
file.
All logo screens are designed by myself. Hope that you will enjoy
them!
If you have any questions or comment, feel free to email to
ve...@umich.edu.Reminder: When downloading '*.sys' files, click the
right mouse button and choose 'Save Link As...' .
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to:
XrX Computer Applications
http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/index.htm
for detailed instructions on making your own logos,
and an archive of dozens of categories of some already made, free to
download.
OR:
Homepages:
Brad: http://www.ug.cs.dal.ca/~spencer/
Dave: http://ccn.cs.dal.ca/~aj259/
LOGOPAK1.ZIP was uploaded damn near everywhere and contains different
stuff. You can get this from our homepages. WARNLOGO.ZIP was
uploaded to ftp.cica.indiana.edu before we realized that we could make
a lot more cool logos :) All it contained were the two warning logos.
This is better.
--------------------------
Craig Marlow
Lim-Dul wrote in message <64o3n3$lbh$1...@news1.ucsd.edu>...
> I would like to know the settings for creating my own startup and
>shutdown screens for Win95. I know that the exact files are logo.sys,
>logow.sys and logos.sys. I also know they are actually just bitmaps; I
>don't, however, know exactly what thier exact size and color depth should
>be. Is there anything else I need to know when making a new screen (other
>than backing up the originals?). Thanks in adavance.
>
All of the 'Logo' files are a bitmap image that is 320 x 400 pixels in size,
256 colours
The logo.sys file should be placed in the root directory (usually C:\)
The logow.sys and the logos.sys files live in the windows directory
(C:\windows\)
To prevent the image looking stretched when displayed, I recommend starting
with an image at 640x480, 16 million colours, then "resample" the image to
320x400 and reduce the colour depth to 256 colours.
Hope this helps,
Craig Marlow,
Please remove NOSPAM from my email address to reply.
< cma...@NOSPAMpowerup.com.au >
< http://www.powerup.com.au/~cmarlow/ >
John F. Hampton, Jr.
Nobody gave you the exact directions, so here's how.
Make sure the image is 400 WIDTH and 320 HEIGHT, and when you re-size it,
uncheck the "Preserve Aspect Ratio".
Then save it as the file you want to replace as a 256-color .bmp. This creates
an image with a file size of 127k, and when you save it Windows will stretch
it to fit your screen. The image looks a little funny when you re-size it, but
it will display perfectly on your screen
Enjoy!
Lim-Dul wrote:
> I would like to know the settings for creating my own startup and
> shutdown screens for Win95. I know that the exact files are logo.sys,
> logow.sys and logos.sys. I also know they are actually just bitmaps; I
> don't, however, know exactly what thier exact size and color depth should
> be. Is there anything else I need to know when making a new screen (other
> than backing up the originals?). Thanks in adavance.
>
> _____
> vca...@ucsd.edu
> http://sdcc10.ucsd.edu/~vcampos
> Visit my web page to view my original artwork!
> Updated frequently.
--
John
John F. Hampton, Jr.
http://www.pcisys.net/~johnfh/
joh...@pcisys.net
c-ha...@digital.com