You guys are a dedicated bunch. I keep watching this thread and I like how nothing seems to slow you guys down with working on all of this. I eagerly await the next update. Try the MyPal browser. Its a recently-defunct fork of Firefox built for XP. I think it was in active development until around August of 2021. They have since shut down, but I think the site is still up.
But but but but but !!!! ...... I wasnt sugesting anything ......... i was pointing at that page and web site to see if it was of any help to any one . I was trying to show comunity spirit
You can simply add your own modded files to $OEM$ structure or directly into captured WIM. Using ResHack is easy, XP2ESD already have some needed RES patches. There will be no new option for this. PS. This logonui is one of worst I ever seen. But everybody like different things EDIT: I already have great resources set for complete system transformation called WinStyle, based on original resources from 2009. But GUI customizing is last thing I'm thinking about these days EDIT: You already need only one RES patch for both architectures, no need to stick with prepatched files if you really like to patch it on the fly.
I didn't say to make my background as the default on the file. What I meant is including the option for XP2ESD to patch XP logonui using Setup.cmd by browsing for existing .res files (which have been customized by user manually before hand, like replacing bitmaps etc). Overwriting UIFile in logonui.exe replaces the CSS from logonui.exe with the one from the UIFile.res. Overwriting Bitmap in logonui.exe replaces the bitmaps from logonui.exe with the one from Bitmap.res. Overwriting StringTable in logonui.exe replaces the strings from logonui.exe with the one from StringTable.res. Basically, all would be needed to be is to introduce the .res files in a folder and if the setting is activated in a .ini file, then the tool will apply the changes inside VHD in path \WINDOWS\system32\logonui.exe regardless of OS version (XP/2003 32/64 bit). In short, it's basically using extracted .res files to apply them inside the logonui.exe from VHD in order to apply any design of your choice, that's all. I am gonna try to do this myself first and if it works then I will link a batch file here (as well as a screenshot).
@UsefulAGKHelper Why would you use "extracted" RES instead? I don't see any benefits, only folder + files mess + more space needed. You can always have RES as neutral 0 and change it on the fly to needed language id (1033 etc). I'm sorry, but this project is really huge and supporting "Transformation packs" was never goal. As I told if you want, you can always add your customized files to $OEM$ directory. We can discuss this later, but this GUI customizing is useless now (trust me there are more important things than beautiful logn background that you see twice a week). I have better plan with RES files, but it require time and it will be great thing, probably for 1.7.. Currently I'm lack of free time. But I'm still catching free hours to test etc.. I personaly need to release 1.6...
I have another stupid suggestion: With over a year and many changes since the last release I would suggest 2.0 as the next version number
Well, comparing 1.5.6 and 1.6 = really different tool, but I will continue in current standard numbering. 2.0 should be for something more special.
@George King As a suggestion regarding the system reserved partition on EFI or NT6 bootloader, you can provide two options: to not allow windows setup to create a system reserved partition (by deleting it) if the user doesn't use EFI (which XP2ESD already deletes (sys reserved) but the exception is that this only should only happen if this option is enabled). to copy the boot files for both BIOS and EFI versions of NT6 and NT5 bootloaders (basically copying all the necessary boot files) on the system reserved partition. This is important especially for UEFI mode because you can only natively boot on EFI from a fat32 partition unless a 3rd-party NTFS.efi driver is used. Btw on the Auto-Sysprep folder, unless you have done it already, you should add both 64-bit and 32-bit bootcfg files under the names of "bootcfg64.exe" and "bootcfg32.exe" respectively from the respective editions of XP and Server 2003, because bootcfg from 32 bit OS refuses to open on 64 bit OS and vice versa.
@UsefulAGKHelper I already developed this idea when added x64 support to XP2ESD. You can review it after release as I stopped wasting time on that currently. But most of code is here. Next weekend must be release even with unfinished things
Yes, I have launched test on all 24 languages with update packs. Will see if it fail somewhere. Hopefully not. Then OOBE mod is needed on 21 languages. Then I'm done and uploading