This one is driving me crazy too; I have a CRT and able to edit load screen colors offers the practical benefit less wear and tear on vulnerable fly-back transformers by avoiding the surges in gain that happen from full field color changes at boot…
Server 2003 offered editable registry entries under the key:
HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTControl PanelColorsHere’s a sample custom boot & shutdown screen color config that use a black background which makes for seamless boot process colors — ie. black from BIOS POST, to startup, and I have my Desktop set to black as well for an easy on the eyes and CRT fly-back transformer boot aesthetic:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTControl PanelColors]
"ActiveBorder"="192 192 192"
"ActiveTitle"="0 0 0"
"AppWorkSpace"="192 192 192"
"Background"="0 0 0"
"ButtonAlternateFace"="181 181 181"
"ButtonDkShadow"="0 0 0"
"ButtonFace"="192 192 192"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonLight"="192 192 192"
"ButtonShadow"="128 128 128"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GradientActiveTitle"="0 0 0"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="192 192 192"
"GrayText"="128 128 128"
"Hilight"="0 0 0"
"HilightText"="255 255 255"
"HotTrackingColor"="0 0 0"
"InactiveBorder"="192 192 192"
"InactiveTitle"="192 192 192"
"InactiveTitleText"="0 0 0"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="255 255 225"
"Menu"="192 192 192"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="192 192 192"
"TitleText"="192 192 192"
"Window"="192 192 192"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"In Server 2003 these keys allow you to change your boot screen and even the ‘legacy‘ menu colors; but adding these settings to the registry doesn’t effect anything in Server 2008…
Some have suggested that the boot screen assets are in binary boot files similar to Vista, but looking at the various candidates like ‘winlogon.exe‘ as some have suggested here don’t appear to have the appropriate assets or entries…
On another forum some suggested looking at ‘winload.exe.mui‘ but not being too swift with a binary editor I didn’t see anything in that file that looked like load or shutdown screen art assets or settings — maybe someone else could take a look?
😐
