how to install bootskins?

First install free program bootskin available at http://www.stardock.com/products/bootskin/ Then click the download button on the page for the bootskin you want (at SkinBase, that is the button with an arrow pointing down mounted on a symbol for a floppy disk Then it depends on which browser you are in. If you are in firefox and get strange symbols instead of a normal page, switch to Internet explorer, Opera or another browser. Because sometimes the zip to download is not a normal zip, which messes up in some firefox settings - which brings up the next topic: What format is the zip or skin in you get, so how will it behave? Often it is not a normal zip you could extract from with winrar or speed commander. You might need the special objectzip program from Stardock to be installed and unzip inside that set to one of the stardock formats. If you are lucky, instead of all these complications, inside the zip you see a file with a .bootskin ending. Then just extract it to the desktop or some other folder, double-click it. Then the bootskin program window comes up and informs you it was successfully applied and you can close the bootskin program window with its little x on the upper right. Often inside the zip you find 2 .bmp files and and .ini file. Then: fast method - DO NOT EXTRACT ANYTHING. Instead, rename ONLY THE ENDING of the whole zip file to the same name with the ending .bootskin instead of .zip, double click it, etc. Sometimes you see a folder program files in the zip. Then its a bit messy. Keep clicking until you get to something showing only the 3 files with an .ini and 2 bmps. Try to convert those 3 to a zip to doubleclick or - better for many people, make a new folder name under bootskin program/skins/ and just put those 3 files in it. Then call up the bootskin program, you will find it in your themes and can preview and apply it. However, if in the last step it says password locked, even if you click ignore, it wont give you the ini file, only the 2 bmps which is not enough. In that case, you are in the wrong unzipping format (try object zip for that) Good luck. Please ask the skinners who created THAT specific bootskin for more help with direct contact by a PM or mail - because that artist knows what zip format it was in or how it should be treated. Some just say unpack everything to the bootskin program folder. But that can leave a mess with many permit .txt files lying around when your collection grows. Tip for skinnners - it is VERY easy to export a perfect, complete .bootskin file that contains EVERYTHING and is double clickable by using the export file menu option inside the bootskin program. And please try to put 1 or 2 words of helping instructions for newbies into your descrip every once and a while. You might even do that on your personal profile page if you always use the same method. There you have more space.;) :taxi

Warning: People new to the bootskin program should consider checking 2 more things: HAVE YOU MADE A SYSTEM RESTORE POINT for backing up all your data before the first restart with this application? Its not a bug-ridden program at all, but this is always a good measure ;) AND: Your settings inside the bootskin program should NOT be set to BROWSE TO LIBRARY or INSTALL FROM THE NET or what its called when exiting the program. NEITHER should it be set to DEFAULT WINDOWS SKIN And if you want the same skin to show MORE THAN ONCE do NOT enable random boot on startup. For collectors: Before DELETING a skin from your favorites, you can first EXPORT it to a special folder you make, like TAXIBOOTSKINBACKUP or whatever. Then deleting still allows you to reimport it to your favorites later without loosing it. The quality of bootskins looks worse, the bigger your screen is. And dithering and resampling when making the bootskin is often treacherous because some programs make you think you are in a 4 - 16 bit mode, but you are in a 8bit mode instead. Then quality is bad. Bootskins mentioned here are only for windows operating system. Unlike the logon phase later on, in the boot phase you are in a 16 color only mode and in a SMALL skin resolution, not changeable in that phase. Automatically, results look different even on a 1024x768 screen, not just the bigger sizes, because of that. What you CAN do is disable the whole screen from showing I think, with tweaking tools or inside MSconfig from windows. And you can manipulate the logons to show or not show, which screensaver or non is active in some of these later stages AFTER the boot phase. That might speed things up but that is not what lovers of customization normally want to know. Bootskins can be made several ways. Skinstudio has a position for it, the old bootxp 2.5 is hard to get but was meant for that, and inside the bootskin program you find a painful but more powerful procedure enabling you to alter position, size etc. of the bar and the likes. Professionals might use photoshop for which there is a special tutorial available at the Joe user forum, one of the 3 stardock forums: http://netbadger.joeuser.com/ArticleComments.asp?c=1&AID=58737 Skinners and members can explain it their own way here, of course These were just my typical experiences. I am not a pro at dithering, either. In my eyes, ideal bootskins for big screens are so packed with pixels they almost want to explode, or correspond to the scalable center pic of some logons. Then chances are highest something will be left over after what the loss does to it because of size differences. And the EASIEST way to see a boot without ANY distortion would be to have a VERY old graphics card with a poor resolution, 640 or 8hundred something. But its still fun to have and make a mood on startup if you work and restart a lot, isn´t it? Note - I have no experiences with Vista yet. Some people mention vista images or logons and only mean a SKIN for XP (before Vista) made to LOOK like Vista, though. OPTION - not mandatory most times, sort of an additional tip for gourmets who collect: If you find .txt files or readme files in zips, READ em before renaming the zip for several reasons. Then COPY + save their text contents to a SPECIAL folder elsewhere. Then delete BEFORE extracting or renaming the zip. Keeps it cleaner in the boot program and skins folder, but often I regretted having no way of finding the authors url or address later, its not always that explicit inside the skin itself. AND dont be confused - when it shows in your program window finally, suddenly the author name might be zebra even though he is flamingo on the site etc. This means, better not import 5 files in a row without checking each one separately first, with preview etc., so you know what belongs to what later when you got a huge collection. Renaming of things does not always work or can kill everything so watch out how you do it, or backup EVERYTHING on the system if you boot with something you messed with like that.