How do you replace the boot screen in every (old) version of Windows?

A long video for a long project. Somewhere in-between a story time and a video essay, I hope you enjoy listening to it while doing chores or falling asleep... or maybe you're genuinely interested in what's going on, in which case, strap in.

Music:

All of this music is provided under Creative Commons licenses. Please visit the albums to see the exact license for each. Please consider as well supporting these artists. Their work is incredible and inspiring.

The gory details:

The art:

The Windows 9x [de]compressor:

My website:

[cpucat]

That one Microsoft dev deciding to only compress the bitmap:

[SuperBadAtGames]

Excellent story, well told. I was hooked from start to finish. RIP to Rudolph's "trade secrets".

[Drayson_scalie]

THANK YOU
I love old tech
I love scalies
This is triggering my obsessions
I LOVE IT

[JendaLinda]

Excellent work, especially the Win9x part.
Those guys with their trade secrets thought they're smarter than everybody else but they're not.

[nervegun]

that bit mentioning about "just shoving all sorts of dll and exe file into Resource Hacker", THAT'S SO MEEEE WHEN I WERE YOUNG YOU NAILED IT SO HARD

[avertver]

It's so weird that you decided to reverse all the boot screen formats directly in a straight way like it was in the early 00s instead of using Ghidra or some other RE software. So much patience and stuff, cool, I love it so much!

[idonotknowwhyyoutubeletsyo]

Came for Windows, stayed for scalie creatures.

[bounceysteve]

i have no clue how i would get your level of hyperfixation, bravo

[integerofdoom]

That early Windows interlaced slide in effect is pretty dope.

[Ransomwave]

You are a great narrator, to the point where you basically managed to keep me entertained with essencially just an unedited desktop with a few graphics done in paint (lol). I hope you do more stuff like this, it was really fun! My only pet peeve about this video's editing is that the music you chose just randomly fades in and sometimes doesn't quite fit the moment, but some admittedly did fit good for the big reveal moment.

[evenex.]

It's 5am and I've spent an hour watching this man modify Windows boot screens. And I don't regret anything.

[Fakeman]

There were tools for Windows XP that allowed you to customize your boot screen. The programs were called "Boot Screen"/"Boot Skin" and "Boot Editor". Allowed you to change where the progress bar was and stuff. Quite a community for it too.

[gdplayer]

The Virtual machine reports that the guest OS supports mouse pointer integration

[rumani]

Great video! Hope Rlow got a lot out of his "trade secret" lol. What a beautiful journey

[Neder.AltHist]

I only now noticed this was uploaded 1 day ago and from a channel with almost 900 subs. I am now one of them, this is so underrated. Keep up the good work

[dergermankind]

The IO7 decompression you got working is cool af, props to you man

[greenknight]

I absolutely ADORE your scalies, they're so adorable! You should take on custom bootscreen commissions! Hahaha

[cocoelacanth]

26:07 I'M SO GLAD WE'RE DOING THIS!!! loving this journey so far, i really appreciate how you guide us through so we can actually follow the logic. makes it feel like i'm figuring this stuff out with you :]



also the dragons are cute :D

[aty]

I'm speechless
That's amazing, you're a gem
Something super precious
I love everything about it, searching, finding, modifying, and your art that you seem to make so quickly.
everything I can't do with my work that takes up 90% of me
Wait... is that love I feel? I'm in love with what you've done!
I love the music and the way you explain it, it feels like you didn't follow a script and the way it's done is just the way it looks.
You could say you followed an anti-script, make it and see

[windowsagent]

Loved it. I never thought I would sit for an hour watching someone explain how the windows boot screen is stored lol