Aug 9

Boot Screen

Server 2008 R2 Workstation , , Add Comment (11)

Instead of the default Windows Server 2008 R2 boot screen you can also use the one of Windows 7. This is done by just extracting the bootres.dll and bootres.dll.mui from the Windows 7 x64 Retail MSDN dvd and placing them in respectively the System32 and System32\en-US folder.

Due to a complaint, the files to modify the boot screen have been removed. To get the files, copy the bootres.dll and bootres.dll.mui from respectively the \Windows\System32 and \Windows\System32\en-US directories of a Windows 7 x64 installation. If you don’t have Windows 7 x64 installed, it is also possible to download the Windows 7 x64 trial iso from Microsoft, mount or extract it, open the \Sources\install.wim file using for example 7-Zip and extract the aforementioned files. After gathering the 2 files, place them in the same locations on your Windows Server 2008 R2 machine (\Windows\System32 and \Windows\System32\en-US for bootres.dll and bootres.dll.mui respectively).

Note: Although the description above extracts the files from Windows 7 with no Service Packs, everything works without any problems. However, if you insist to have the SP1 version of the files, you can extract the bootres.dll file from SP1 for Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2 x64. After downloading the windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe file, run the installer with the /x switch (windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe /x) whereafter you will get a dialog to select the location where you want the files to be extracted. Wait until the files have been extracted, open windows6.1-KB976932-X64.cab using for example 7-Zip, navigate to the amd64_microsoft-windows-bootres_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_9d42c69298905ee5 directory and grab the bootres.dll file. The bootres.dll.mui file isn’t included in the SP1 installation package, however the bootres.dll.mui files from SP0 and SP1 are equal (SHA1 hashes match) so that file can be extracted from the Windows 7 x64 trial DVD.

1. Download bootres.zip (2.10MB) from Rapidshare, Megaupload or 4Shared.

2. Extract the .zip to a folder and run install(.cmd)
Extract the archive and install using install.cmd

3. Enjoy your Windows 7 boot screen!
Windows 7 logo boot screen on Windows Server 2008 R2

 

Continue to get the colorful Windows 7 logon screen…


11 comments so far...

  • user Said on August 18th, 2009 at 11:30 am:

    sorry, but i have trouble reverting it back to original w08r2 boot screen, could somebody help me?

    Arris: Just by removing the %SystemRoot%\System32\bootres.dll and %SystemRoot%\System32\en-US\bootres.dll.mui files you should have the original boot screen back.

  • Raul Cloud Said on September 16th, 2009 at 12:54 am:

    User, just go to Windows\System32 and delete bootres.dll and go to System32\en-us and delete bootres.dll.mui.

  • Amplificator Said on February 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm:

    This doesn’t work.
    I read somewhere that you are supposed to patch Winload.exe too in order for this to work. Simply placing bootres.dll and bootres.dll.mui doesn’t seem to work.

    Arris: In fact it does work. It has already been downloaded hundreds of times and as you can see there are no complaints that it doesn’t work! :)

  • Amplificator Said on February 16th, 2010 at 7:29 pm:

    Can you suggest another aproach to getting it working?

    I’m running the evaluation of 2008 R2 Datacenter with latest upadtes from WIndows Update.

    Arris: If you are booting/running Windows Server 2008 with another language than en-US which you can verify by looking at the locale value when running bcdedit without any parameters in a Command Prompt, you need to place the bootres.dll.mui file manually into %SystemRoot%\System32\nl-NL (replace nl-NL with your locale). Good luck!

  • EQ Said on November 14th, 2010 at 7:32 pm:

    I had a problem with the installer, but I dragged and drop the contents to the required folders and it worked fine. Why is that?

    Arris: The installer does nothing more than copying the files, so doing that manually works fine too :)

  • V.V. Said on January 14th, 2011 at 7:20 pm:

    I have put those files as advised but still have black screen during Server 2008 R2 boot (except that Vista bar is shown for short time). Though everything boots fine. Except you do not know whether it is booting or hangs (because screen is just black).
    What else could be?
    Thanks,
    V.

  • Ufff Said on July 28th, 2011 at 1:15 pm:

    links don’t works!!!

  • Jerry Said on August 3rd, 2011 at 5:13 am:

    Would someone be able to post manual instructions for this process? The files were taken down from all of those download sites and I would very much like to have the nice windows 7 boot logo vs what I have now :-)

  • Jay Said on December 28th, 2011 at 5:59 pm:

    Anyone? I can’t seem to find the bootres files anywhere on the interwebz.. and my internet usage is capped so I can’t download that 1GB monster of a file just for a little .dll package. Help please :(

  • Jay Said on December 28th, 2011 at 6:11 pm:

    Unless… I’ll give copying it from my other w7 pc a go, you never know :) *fingers crossed*

    Arris: That will indeed also work fine :) Saves you a lot of bandwidth ;)

  • Eman Alsayyad Said on January 21st, 2012 at 12:27 pm:

    Can anybody upload again the file bootres.zip as it is removed or tell me the instruction to change the boot screen manually thank you

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