CHANGING WINDOWS START AND SHUT DOWN SCREENS

Windows start and shut down screens, are just bitmap image files ie: BMP's. However, Windows dosent make it easy to find them-they are hidden files, and by default you can't see them. Open Windows Explorer, then choose Folder Options from the view menu. Select the View tab, thern go to Advanced Settings and click the button next to Show All Files. Them click OK.
Now you need to find the files. The screen that says "Windows 95/98 is now shutting down" is called logo.sys. The screen that says" it is now safe to turn off your computer" in amber is low.sys (not all PC's will show this).
Right-click on the Start button and select Find. Type in logo.sys, logow.sys into the Named box. Choose your hard drive from the Look in box list. Click Find Now. Microsoft dosen't want you to interfere with these system files-if you double click on them, nothing will happen. First you have to make backup files of the originals in case anything
goes wrong *YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*. Be very careful that you are only doing this to the two .SYS files mentioned here: there are many other .sys files on your PC, and if you change them, it may no longer work. Right-click on each icon (You can do this in thr first dialogue box if you want) and choose Copy. Next, find a suitable location for the files (somewhere you can find them easily, such as your desktop), right-click and choose Paste. Right-click again and choose Re-name add a 1 to the copy's name so Windows dosen't get confused and you wont forget which file is which. Return to the original, right-click and choose Open With in the dialogue box that now opens, scroll down until you find either paint shop pro, or paint or any other image-editing software that you have installed on your computer which is capable of creating Bitmap images and click Open. Make any changes you want. Don't worry about the fact that it looks squashed. Windows stretches it when it displays the image on startup or shut down. You can edit the image as you wish with either something you have created yourself or something you have downloaded off of the net, or I have put a few good examples of different microsoft ones on my website
that may appeal to you and liven up the otherwise dull startup/shutdown screens that microsnot supply.
If you are creating your own for example in paint shop pro, Select all or part of your new image, and choose Copy from the Edit Menu. Now, switch to logow.sys.
From the Edit menu scroll down to Paste, then across to as New Selection. Now, you'll see that Logow.sys is acting like a window on the picture that you have pasted in, use the mouse to move it so that the part you want is showing. Finally save logow.,sys back to the windows folder. Your new image will be shown whenever Windows shuts down.