How to use a custom Win9x bootup and shut down logo.

by LitePC

Windows 98 can display 3 logo screens: the "boot logo", the "shutting down" logo, and the "safe to turn off your machine" logo.

Custom logos can be obtained on the web or easily made yourself. Each is a 256 color bitmap that is 320 pixels wide x 400 pixels high that is stretched to 640x400 when it is displayed. Screens can have some of the colors animated and there are utilities on the web that will let you mess with that should you wish to. We suggest a google search for "animated boot logos" will yield plenty of leads so we'll leave it at that.

To replace the boot logo you need to name the new 320x400 bitmap to "logo.sys" and place it in the root of the boot drive (typically C:\). There is nothing to back up first as the original Windows boot logo is embeded in the hidden system file IO.SYS. Windows will use this if LOGO.SYS is not present.

If you want to replace the shutting down logos also you should back up the original logos that are stored in the windows directory. Rename logos.sys and logow.sys to logos.bmp and logow.orig respectively and then copy the replacement logos.sys and logow.sys to the windows directory. All the logo files are the same format so you can rename them and use them where you like.

We maintain a logo gallery for 98lite related logo's at http://www.litepc.com/logo.html. Some files will contain all three logos and some will just contain a single logo.sys file. You can mix and match as you please. We also welcome new submissions - just just email them to us.

Note: There are numerous "galleries" of custom boot logos available on the web that you should be able to find with relative ease by searching for "windows boot logo" in your favorite search engine.

How to use a custom Win9x bootup and shut down logo.

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