How to customize your Windows Vista boot screen (SP1 compatible)

Let’s spice things up this week by changing our boring old Windows Vista boot screen to a custom one.
I can assure you that this method will work with all versions of Vista, whether you have SP1 installed or not.

If you’ve customized your Vista boot screen or logo before, you’ll remember how much of a hassle it was. This time, we will use the Vista Visual Master utility to change our boot screen. Click here to download it.a

aOnce you have finished installing the program, make sure you Run as Administrator. (Right click Vista Visual Master and select the appropriate option.)

The program is very straight forward. Select Boot Screen in the navigation bar on the left.

Click on Browse and select for the photo you want to replace the bootscreen with. Windows will attempt to stretch your photo to fit the entire screen, so it is best to make sure that you have a photo with a resolution of at least 1024*768. If you’re looking for some good wallpaper, there are some great ones at Socwall and Deviantart.

Once you are done browsing, your picture will show up in the box. Click on generate and VVM will generate an MUI file. Click on Apply to finsh. The program will automatically make a backup of the default MUI in the following directory:

C:\Windows\System32\en-US

The en-US part may vary depending on your language and version of Windows Vista.

For future reference, the file used to display the boot screen is called winload.exe.mui
And the backup is called winload.exe.bak.vistamaster

If you want to uninstall the program after you change the boot screen, I recommend you make a copy of the backup and put it somewhere that you can remember.

And that’s it! You should see your new boot screen the next time you start your computer. I also recommend you to explore the other features of Vista Visual Master, as it has other great customization features that allow you to declutter your Windows Vista workspace.