BOOTSKIN -> How to...?

Progress Bar editing

from Stardock Forums
I want to make the progress bar on a boot screen (the part that actually moves) thicker.  Meaning that I want a 22 pixel y-axis instead of the basic 12 pixel one.  If anyone knows how to do this through bootskin.ini editing or some other method (that doesn't involve sys32 hacking), I would greatly appreciate it.
wincustomize
2,302 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Unfortunately there's no way to accomplish what you request without some difficult work.

-Mike
[Stardock Support]
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I just want to know what the heck is wrong with this bootscreen software?  I can't load a regular image in.  I tried the stardock skinstudio and it's preparation is crap the image looks like crap when it comes from a 16 color gif file in the first place.  I'm about to give up on this and go back to bootXP at least it gives me a proper looking screen and not something that looked like it was converted from 16bit to  16 colors.  
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
molitar, try Irfanview http://irfanview.tuwien.ac.at/ there's an option to reduce the number of colors so you can reduce them to 16 colors, and the filter to do so gives a fairly good result
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Well I got a good looking screen using other boot logon managers but when I use bootskin it seems the custom 16 bit color pallete is not used and the colors are all screwed up.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
http://www.skinningsos.net/viewtopic.php?t=2 Try this link molitar, it leads to a step-by-step instruction on how to prepare a picture in order to work properly with Bootskin.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Here's another guide, Molitar:
https://www.wincustomize.com/Articles.aspx?p=1&view=1&sort=1&direction=0&search=bootskin
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks Rabidrobot this is the part that was missing from all the tutorials that caused the problem with messed up colors.


Palette: Local (Adaptive)
Colors: 16
Forced: Black and White
Transparency should not be checked
Options
Matte: should be "grayed out"
Dither: Diffusion
Amount: 100%
Preserve Exact Colors should be unchecked


Now I wonder why the original image is so clean but the bootscreen image is so grainy tho with bootskin but looked great with bootxp which of course no longer works after installing SP2.  Any ideas why it's so grainy at bootup?