Simple issue: Windows 7 has the nice four-color pulsating windows logo Windows Server 2008 R2 has the lame Vista/2008 progress bar Since they are the same build, seems there might be a way to make Server 2008 use the nice boot screen instead of the lame one?
Interesting experience. So R2 doesn't have bootres.dll at all? Did you take the file from Win7 x64? What about it in syswow64 folder? Looks like R2 doesn't "catch" copied bootres.dll for some reason... There's also mui file(s) bootres.dll.mui in corresponding subfolders. probably they also should be copied.
Ah yes, that was it. I had copied bootres.dll but not en-US\bootres.dll.mui - that appears to do the trick. I just tried copying only those two files to an otherwise clean machine, that indeed is the correct procedure and none of the other steps are needed.
Windows 7? Has anyone had success with changing the actual image used in 7? I am working on this process but not having alot of success yet.