I am going to walk everyone through one way to change your boot screen as well as make your own using the program BootSkin by Stardock.
*Please remember to backup any system files before using a program that alters them in anyway. I suggest before using this program to backup boot.ini and ntoskrnl.exe
**I cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by this tutorial or BootSkin. You are doing this at your OWN risk.
How to change your boot screen using BootSkinBefore you do anything it is always wise to backup system files that will be replaced or altered by a program or patch. Even if the program backs the files up it is always wise to do it yourself as well.
-Back up the files boot.ini
This can be found in the root of your hard drive you are booting windows on. Default is C:\ so it would be C:\boot.ini
-Backup ntoskrnl.exe
This file is located in your windows system directory. Default is C:\WINDOWS\System32
You can copy these files into any place you would like to keep them safe from deleting them.Now you can download BootSkin. You can find it on the Stardock website here.Install BootSkinNow you are ready to customize your boot screen. BootSkin comes with a few bootskins for you already. You can choose from one of those or you can download them at either WinCustomize or deviantART.If you chose the bootscreens that already came with bootskin just hit apply on your selection and you are finished. you will have to reboot to see if your bootscreen is working properly. If you have decided to download a bootscreen it will usually come either in a compressed format (zip, rar, gzip ect.) or as a .bootskin file.
-If you downloaded a compressed file extract it anywhere you like. Inside the file there should be the .bootskin file. All you have to do is double click on the file and it should open up BootSkin automatically with a preview int he list of your new bootscreen. Select it and hit apply to make that your new screen.
-If you downloaded the .bootskin file, all you have to do is double click and as stated above BootSkin should open up with a preview of the screen in the list. Select it and hit apply.
Remember you will have to reboot to see your selection in action.How to Create your own boot skinOf course you will need to be familiar with BootSkin and how to change the screen. Please follow the first tutorial posted. Be sure to backup all the recommended files as well.Now to make a boot skin is very simple. All you need is three files. bootskin.ini and two images, one for the background and one for the loading bar. Before making the ini you have to make the images you are going to use. I am not a graphics designer in any way so you will have to make the images on your own. The most important information about these two images you are going to make is that they have to be only 4-bit (16 colors) A boot screen loads images with a generic video driver that cannot support more than that. To check your images Stardock provides a tool in there SkinStudio. You can download a free copy on the SkinStudio Site.
-In SkinStudio to check your images to eb sure they are 4-bit color go to tools - BootSkin - Prepare Image and browse for your picture. You should have the “Dither” option checked and experiment with the different Resampling and Dithering types to find the closest 16 color representation of your original image. Press Save.
-Here is an example of the loading bar:
These images can be bmp, jpg, png whatever you feel most comfortable working with.Now that you have your two images it is time to start creating your bootskin. I would make a folder on your desktop called what you intend on calling your skin. CrystalXP is a good example. Take your background image and your loading bar image and set them inside the folder. Now you have a folder on your desktop with two images in there.Now you need to create an ini. Right click inside the folder and go to New and then Text Document. Rename it to be bootskin.iniini files can be opened inside notepad so do not worry about not being able to open it. Double click on your new bootskin.ini Notepad should open. Inside you are going to put the following:
CODE[BootSkin]
Type=0
Name = "XXXXXXXXXXXX"
Author = "XXXXXXXXXXXX"
Description = "XXXXXXXXXXXX"
ProgressBar=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.bmp
ProgressBarX = XXX
ProgressBarY = XXX
ProgressBarWidth = XXX
Screen=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.bmp
Where the X's are you are going to replace it with the images and Pixel values you need for your bootskin. You can pretty much hit and miss with the pixel pints on X and Y since a bootscreen is only 640x480Once you have edited the ini file to your liking save it and now you can copy the folder on your desktop with your three files in it to the BootSkin directory in ProgramFiles. Defualt is:
C:\Program Files\Starsock\WinCustomize\BootSkin\skinsNow you can open BootSkin and your new skin shoudl apear ont eh list. If you hit Preview you can see what it would look like as well as make adjustments to your pixel points in the ini.I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions about what I have written please go ahead and post.
Helped me alot. 
Great job!
Really useful... Thanks 
