Making the boot seamless (1 Viewer)

[sebrock]

I almost got the HTPC to look totally dedicated. All that is left from windows xp now is the "Applying your personal settings..." which shows for 2-3 secs at bootup. Anyone have an idea how I can get rid of/change this window?

Also the same applies to when shutting down "Saving your personal settings..." window...

Any workaround / help is highly appreciated.

 

[mikael]

don't remember exactly, you should edit the group policy settings in run -> gpedit.msc

try to search on this forum or google

 

[sebrock]

I have tried searching for this but with no luck... Are you sure editing group policys will get rid of the "Applying your personal settings..." screen? Sounds strange to me...

 

[Sh4nn0w]

I bookmarked these:

Run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System
Enable 'Remove Boot / Shutdown / Logon / Logoff Status messages'
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Logon
Enable 'Always use classic logon'
Run msconfig
In Boot.ini section, Select /NOGUIBOOT

Also:

How to Hide Windows for a HTPC
And also get faster boot times etc.
by DMAN_LFC

1. Go into the group policy editor there is a setting to turn off the login logoff dialog boxes etc.
Go to START and RUN, and type gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>System
There you will find the following:
“Remove Boot / Shutdown….. message” You want to enable that.
Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>System >Logon
There you will find the following:
”Don’t display the Getting….”
"Always use classic logon"
You want to enable these.

2. Use Autologon – TweakUI or other applications to not prompt for a password etc.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/so...html#autologon
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k/Autologon.htm

3. Disable Bootscreen; add noguiboot parameter in boot.ini. Not having to load the picture also gains a little boot speed.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Professional" /noguiboot /fastdetect

Note: Changing the boot logo may be a better proposition.

4. Make the login background the same as your desktop wallpaper.

5. Also the make desktop wallpaper the same as the programs intial screen (make screenshot).
This way the first thing you'll see when the machine boots up (besides the bios) is this screen.

6. Go to the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" - and change the "Shell" value to " <program>"

7. To get rid of the blue desktop that appears momentarily go to the registry key
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
and edit the Wallpaper string with the path of the background you use for the application, now you won't see the blue default background colour anymore

8. Modify the 'Background' String under HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors
Set this to 0 0 0 which is black. The default value is 58 110 165.

9. Turn off Windows Sounds altogether.

Fater Boot tips

1. Remove all non-essential start-up programs from the startup groups and run registry entries.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run

2. Reduce the number of hardware devices and subsequent drivers required to boot.

3. If possible boot off fast media i.e. DiskonChip.

4. Stop unnecessary Services
Help & Support
Fast User Switching
Portable Media
Task Scheduler
Print Spooler etc.

5. Finally run BootVis to ensure boot files are in the optimal disk locations.

Other tips…

Try and get a motherboard or BIOS which you can easily change the BIOS logo.
Intel has motherboards which have a Rapid Boot BIOS option to ignore the Floppy drive and Optical drive BIOS tests.
Alternatively disable BIOS features such as Serial Ports, Parrallel ports etc.
Also disable IDE ports & floppy controllers if not in use as well.
If no USB devices are required during boot disable USB Legacy support.
Make the Hard Drive the first boot device.
Disable the network card looking for a network during boot. (GPEDIT.MSC)

 

[sebrock]

than you guys, some of it helped. I ended up replacing the shell as well, works great. Now its up to one final problem to fix. When using mediaportal as shell a lot of important programs are not autostarted at logon (because of explorer.exe is not there any more to do it) so how could I fix to autostart without starting explorer.exe at the same time?

I saw an option in gpedit.msc thay said autostart programs at logon. However this does not work, guess it is because of no explorer.exe?

 

[gxtracker]

You could try scheduled tasks in the control panel. In there is an option to have programs start when windows starts, but im not sure if it waits for explorer.exe to start first.

 

[reagan+carter]

why don't you start by reading some of the wiki pages, the info is in there

 

[sebrock]

why don't you start by reading some of the wiki pages, the info is in there

sorry I'm late in reply. I got it to work good with scriptedlogon, everything except daemon tools which states "Failed notification icon, Error 2" and then quits. This is due to the fact that there is no taskbar to put the icon in I guess... so thats a problem.

Same with AutoHotKey that will not launch a script with scriptedlogon. I have to look into this more.

But its great to skip explorer.exe, I saved about 25% of my physical memory on this!

BTW, if you already know exactly where it is why not help instead of just yelling like that...

 

[reagan+carter]

sorry I'm late in reply. I got it to work good with scriptedlogon, everything except daemon tools which states "Failed notification icon, Error 2" and then quits. This is due to the fact that there is no taskbar to put the icon in I guess... so thats a problem.

Odd. I've never had that kind of behaviour using Daemon Tools. I'm using a rather obsolete version of this tool though. BTW you don't need to start Daemon Tools alongwith MediaPortal to get your disks mounted: MediaPortal calls Daemon Tools on-the-fly.

Same with AutoHotKey that will not launch a script with scriptedlogon. I have to look into this more.

Sorry, I've never used this proggie.
Try to create a simple batch file and see if it works as it should.
Give me your script file, I'll cross-check its syntax if you wish.

BTW, if you already know exactly where it is why not help instead of just yelling like that...

maybe because people prefer to post rather than read Did I sound hostile?

 

[James]

I didn't think he was yelling

However, people sometimes get tired of answering the same questions, or things that are already in the wiki or FAQ.

So watch this and enjoy

http://www.starterupsteve.com/swf/posting.html