Hiding Windows

WARNING:

As with any operation that involves accessing the registry or modifying Windows boot settings, drivers, etc, it is entirely possible to render your system unbootable. All usual precautions apply: System Restore, the F8 key during boot and the original Windows XP setup disk are your friends. Backup any important files to a media that is 100% separate from your system. You are proceeding at your own risk.

Introduction

To add to the illusion that your home arcade machine is a 'real' arcade machine, it would be nice to be able to hide the familiar Windows PC look and feel. Nobody wants to see the Windows logo when your cabinet is turned on; its kind of like being caught with your pants down. There are several ways of achieving this, lets have a look at your options...

Replacing Your BIOS Logo

Some modern BIOS’s support changing the logo that is the very first thing displayed when your computer turns on. It should be noted that there’s not too much to gained from doing this as most computers are so fast the image is only momentarily flashed and your display device normally won’t have got up to operating specifications before the BIOS screen disappears. If yours can be changed, there will be an utility to do this on the motherboard manufacturer’s website.

There's other info to add to this, but darned if I can find it right now!

Replacing Your Boot Screen

The boot screen is the Windows XP logo on a black background with a little blue progress bar underneath it. Before making any changes, be sure to create a System Restore point before attempting these methods. While not a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card, it can save you from yourself. This way, in case something goes wrong, restarting your computer, pressing and holding F8 until the Operating System menu appears and selecting “Last Known Good Configuration” should get you back to your previous state in most cases.

You can modify your boot screen in these ways:

BootSkin

This product inserts a driver file into the XP startup sequence that displays an image instead of actually loading a driver.

Pros:

• It does not patch or access any operating system files.
• If something goes wrong, it is simple to fix.
• You can customize both the screen and the progress bar.

Cons:

• Relies on BIOS and driver manufacturers strictly obeying certain guidelines.
• If the system is incompatible, you'll likely get a "blue screen of death".

BootXP

This alters resources and some other bits in a file called “ntoskrnl.exe”.

Pros:

• You can customize both the screen and the progress bar.

Cons:

• If something goes wrong, you will need an original Windows XP CD to put it right and knowledge of how to use the recovery console.
• It accesses and patches a critical operating system file.
• You get really ugly and slow nag screens every time you want to change your boot screen if you don’t pay for it.

Slimm Boot-Logo / The Microsoft Way

There is an undocumented switch in Microsoft Windows XP’s operating system settings file. Slimm Boot-Logo simply flicks the switch.

You can also set this switch manually. Go to My Computer 
>Properties >Advanced >Startup and Recovery >Settings.
Select “Edit startup options file”.  
Add “ /bootlogo /noguiboot” to your default operating 
system (there must be a space between each switch) and 
add a 16-color 640 x 480 pixel BMP file called
"boot.bmp” to your Windows directory.

Pros:

• Simple, safe, simply asks the operating system to use a custom boot screen.
• No illegal or unrecommended patching of any file.
• Least chance of anything going wrong (your changed settings can be checked before you reboot. After performing the change, go to My Computer >Properties >Advanced >Startup and Recovery >Settings. If you still have “Microsoft Windows XP” in the combo box at the top, everything should work fine next time you boot.

Cons:

• No progress bar on custom boot screen.
• Have to convert your image to 640 x 480 pixels and 16 colors yourself.
• If it goes wrong you will need an original Windows XP CD to put it right.

• If something goes wrong: You need to rebuild the “boot.ini” file using the instructions in this knowledge base article

Replacing Explorer With Your FE In XP

If you want to almost completely bypass Windows and all things Windows, you may want to set your front end as a shell. Note; to do this automatically during startup in XP your computer may be a part of a workgroup, but it can't be part of a domain.

Steps

• Create a user that will be auto logged in. This user should have admin rights.
• Set XP to automate the login process.
  1. Click start >run >type "control userpasswords2"
  2. Deselect the Users must enter a username and password... checkbox.
  3. Click Apply
  4. Enter the user & pass you want to login with & click OK
  5. Click OK again
• Configure your front end... this is not a trial run, so make sure it's the way you want it. You can always get the explorer back, but it will take a minute or two to do so.
• Open regedit and find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
• Find a string entry called Shell. If you can't find Shell create a string entry and name it Shell. Set the string entry to the name and directory location of your front end, for example C:\arcade\mamewah.exe
• IF you want to limit the access of the auto log-in user, log out of it, and login to another admin user and set the auto-login user to a standard user

Before you follow this advice... you should wait for me to finish this up....

MORE TO COME

Mahuti - Not sure if I'm adding more steps, so I'm simply adding this in below and it can be deleted if unneeded, or meshed in if anything is useful.

To get "XX FE" to run as a shell and start with no user invervention, your computer must ONLY be part of a workgroup. You’ll need to first create 2 accounts with Admin priveledges. One should be the user that will run "XX FE".

Now, you’ll want to set up XP to automate the login process. Click Start, Run, and enter “Control Userpasswords2″ (MINUS the quotation marks). Uncheck the “Users must enter a username and password to use this computer” box. Click “Apply”. Enter the user name and password you want to auto-login with, and click OK. Hit OK again, and you’re good to go.

Make sure "XX FE" is set up the way you want it before proceeding with the next steps.

Now to run "XX FE" as your shell. Open regedit under the user you want to run "XX FE" as. Open your registry folders as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini\boot

If there is a value “shell”, change the first 3 letters which read SYS to USR.

ex: SYS:BLAH\BLABETY\BLABLA\BLABOO should now look like:
USR:BLAH\BLABETY\BLABLA\BLABOO.

This tells windows to ignore the system’s shell values and load up a shell value on a user by user basis. If you don’t do this it will never even look for the shell value in the current user key, meaning the next part won’t ever be seen.

Now (still in regedit) open these registry folders as follows:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\

Create a value for Shell and put the path to your new shell. You’ll have to find the path to "XX FE.exe" on your computer and enter it.

ex: C:\Program Files\XX FE\XX FE.exe 
YOURS may be different, use YOUR OWN path to the exe!

Log out as the auto-login user and log back in as another user with administrative rights. (You DID create 2 accounts with adminstrative priveledges as was suggested, right? )

Change the auto-login user to a standard user. This limits anyone to having more access than you want them to have.

To log out, ctrl alt del and log into another user which you’re free to use as whatever.

Should you ever care to go back to the way things were, after firing up XX FE, simply hit ctrl alt del and run regedit again, and delete the shell entry you created. POOF! Everything’s back to “normal” again!

Hiding Explorer While Your FE Starts

You can achieve a similar affect as the above (although not as "complete", and may or may not be acceptable to you) with the following steps:

1. Put a shortcut to your FE's .exe file in “Startup” folder.
2. Hide all windows desktop icons. You will need to download and install the Microsoft PowerToy TweakUI and change the Desktop settings.
3. Set desktop to black or use a wallpaper image of your choice
4. Auto hide task bar.

Welcome/Startup/Shutdown/Background Color

• To hide the Welcome Screen (where you'd normally log in) you'll need to change from the default windows XP welcome screen to the other style by going to Control Panels >User Accounts >Change the way users logon or off. Deselect the “Use Welcome Screen” checkbox.

• To get rid of the startup and shutdown messages, go to Start >Run and type in regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

If there’s a DisableStatusMessages dword there, change it to 1, otherwise add it and change it to 1.

• To change the login background color from blue to black (to better hide it), use regedit again and navigate to HKEY_USERS\DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors\Background The 3-digit RGB color for black is 0 0 0.