Windows 7: Boot Screen?

davehc said:

As they are commenting quite a bit on the proposed boot up speed of Windows 7, I really doubt that an animated boot screen will help towards that end.

While it may not necesarilly help, I don't think it would be a major hindrance either. Afterall, if that is indeed the next boot screen, then it doesn't seem to slow down startup. From pressing the power button, it was only 24 seconds until windows was loaded. Not to mention that judging by the lack of a camera and plain older design, it seems to be running on an aged Dell system.

Edit:

I do, however, like 7s current boot animation, very simple and minimalistic, and its just pretty.

napilopez said:

I do, however, like 7s current boot animation, very simple and minimalistic, and its just pretty.

Hello napilopez; I agree with you!











Later Ted

Don't forget that part of the 7 mandate was to have 'the wow factor' brought back to Windows. So I would expect to see a more animated loading bar as opposed to a simple one. It's likely that there will be an option to disable the new loading bar a la 'no gui boot'. The only real question is what animation will end up being on the RTM release.

napilopez said:

I personally believe the wow factor does not necesarily have to be uber flashy.

Tell that to MS

Either way, the logo will undoubtedly be refined over time.

"One of the lesser appreciated elements in Windows is the boot screen. After all, it’s short-lived and is synonymous with waiting, the last thing we all want to do when powering up/resuming our machines.

Back in the day, boot screens were completely static and/or utilized palette swapping trickery [Windows 95 boot graphic not shown] to give the illusion of an animated progress bar to indicate Windows hasn’t hung.

Newer boot screens retained many of their original roots (e.g. bitmaps, useless scrolling animation), but were a complex composite of various resources strewn about the disk (e.g. scrolling animation, Windows logo, text in different languages).

In Windows 7, the boot screen is simplified in many ways. It comprises of a single bitmap, loaded from a small Windows Imaging (WIM) file at runtime, and some text rendered on-the-fly. The approach of stuffing a small bitmap inside a WIM may seem a little overkill right now but this was likely done to future-proof boot reporting. I won’t be surprised if we see other boot-related resources (e.g. sounds) housed within the WIM in the near future…

In the PDC build of Windows 7 (6801), each frame is 225×34.

The aforementioned 24-bit bitmap, named activity.bmp, lives inside a small pineapple WIM under the sea within the new bootres.dll resource library. This bitmap contains frames that are glued together vertically and smoothly played back at roughly 30 frames per second (fps).

Boot Activity Bitmap Viewer utility

Utility showing the four different sets of scroll-bar animations

The most interesting part of the new bitmap is that it comprises of four frame sets, each designed to be animated separately to indicate where Windows is at in the boot process (e.g. kernel, system driver initialization), similar to what was seen in Windows 2000.

Before you think about cracking open your resource editor and replacing system files, be aware winload.exe, the Windows Boot Loader, has a list of critical files (e.g. ntoskrnl, tmp.sys) that are checked for valid digital signatures. bootres.dll and its associated MUI are now on this Sinofsky-like list, an intentional move to secure the Windows 7 brand. This means any modification of these files will result in Windows 7 falling back to the Windows Vista-style boot graphics. To workaround this behavior, you’ll need to patch the Windows Boot Loader itself, or keep a kernel debugger attached at all times. Yuck. [Nitpicker corner: I have not gone down the noguiboot path]

Obligatory I-tried-to-learn-more-about-Windows-but-got-shot-down quote has been duplicated for your convenience below:

"At this time, Microsoft has no information to share about boot time graphics in Windows 7. Please note that Microsoft works extremely closely with OEMs to provide rich opportunities for customization and differentiation." - Microsoft Spokesperson"

Windows 7 to report boot progress again, like Windows 2000 - Within Windows


"So last week, winfuture posted about Windows 7 build 6954 having a new boot screen. Ever since then, people have been wanting to see exactly what this new boot screen looks like. I can tell you it looks pretty nifty. It is basically 4 animating balls that come together and form a glowing windows flag, making for a pretty cool effect.
I recently had a chance to film this boot screen in action, so without further ado, watch the video of the new Windows 7 boot screen below. Excuse the iffy quality, had to do this with my digital camera.

*MICROSOFT HAS PULLED THE VIDEO FROM SOAPBOX. FOR NOW, WATCH YouTube - Windows 7 Build 6956 new animated boot screen video UNTIL VIDEO IS UPLOADED TO GS*"

EXCLUSIVE: Windows 7 695x Boot Screen Video at GeekSmack News

I know, right? Anyone who says they want to try the OS because of the boot screen is, well, either a duffer or being *extremely* sarcastic.

I mean, for crying out loud - we already have the ability to change the boot screens in current OSs - If someone could find a nice quality video of that they could probably make it their XP boot screen in a matter of a few minutes...

Can you make the video size about 1680 x 1050