[hewee]

You was right about the 8 bit 256 colors Chuck.

I was also playing around with the system info or what you can do with the oeminfo.ini
Adding to much text to a line will make you have to scroll to the side.
You can get a 60 spaces pre line without having to scroll to the side.
If you have lots of Line do not miss the number count. I mean Line38= and the next line you have Line40= it will stop show at Line38=. So check you number count to make sure you did not miss a number.
You can skip lines and add your text like this here...
[Support Information]
Line1= ***HelpOnThe.Net: Tech Support Guy***
Line2=
Line3=Free help for Windows 95, NT, 98, 2000, XP, and more!
Line4=
Line5=http://forums.techguy.org/

If you want to add lot of info then you need to add lots of Lines.
Do not know how many you can add but I got up to Line150= and stopped so you can add more. So I knew how many Lines I coud go I just added the number by it every 20 lines like this
Line150=line 150

[ChuckE]

My suggestion is to NOT add too many lines at all! About a half dozen is all you need. (Actually one Line1= is all you really need, but read on).

If you can easily get to the actual file "oeminfo.ini" then it is just a good "hidden place" to tuck away info for when you need to get your serial number, computer support phone number, account numbers, who to talk to about whatever, etc.

You have just that half dozen lines, like:

[Support Information]
Line1= ***HelpOnThe.Net: Tech Support Guy***
Line2=http://forums.techguy.org/
Line3=Free help for Windows 95, NT, 98, 2000, XP, and more!
Line4=
Line5=This is file %systemroot%\system32\oeminfo.ini
Line6=

That 5th line is [u]key[/b] of the oeminfo.ini file name you can easily open.
When you click on that [Support Information] button, you will see one line that reads:
This is file %systemroot%\system32\oeminfo.ini
Just do a double-click on any of the last half of that line and you will see the whole portion hi-light.
Then just press Ctrl-C (which does a copy)
Then just press Win+R (which opens the Run window with whatever in there hi-lighted)
Then press Ctrl+V (which replaces what was there with %systemroot%\system32\oeminfo.ini
Then just press Enter
When immediately opens the oeminfo.ini file with your defined editor.
And you can read, and edit, all the contents of the oeminfo.ini file, including the text that has no line numbers at all.

Simple!

[ChuckE]

As for you being able to get "about 60 spaces (you mean characters) without out having to scroll to the side" It really all depends upon the font used. The text, being proportional, your can get a lot more iiiiii's than WWWWWW's.

Since you can change the font, via the Control Panel, you should not expect 60 characters all the time.

[hewee]

I only have the 5 line but text only in 3 lines.
Now my oeminfo.ini is in the system folder and not the system32 folder.
So doing this but changing the folder will not work. But I can still high light and copy it so that is ok.

[hewee]

Originally Posted by ChuckE

As for you being able to get "about 60 spaces (you mean characters) without out having to scroll to the side" It really all depends upon the font used. The text, being proportional, your can get a lot more iiiiii's than WWWWWW's.

Since you can change the font, via the Control Panel, you should not expect 60 characters all the time.

Yes that is what I mean and yea your right about what text and font is used.

[ChuckE]

Originally Posted by hewee

my oeminfo.ini is in the system folder and not the system32 folder.

So, edit the text I told you about for the:
This is file %systemroot%\system32\oeminfo.ini
to
This is file %systemroot%\system\oeminfo.ini
or even to:
This is file C:\windows\system32\oeminfo.ini

It doesn't matter, the trick is so that a double-click, not a "careful to only swipe and copy" action, works to hi-light the C:\pathname\filename

The line, as I originally posted it will work for most WinXP users. You may have upgraded your PC from some earlier version of Windows, and that is why your files are not in the system32.

At work, where I have lots (dozens) of different computers, and all kinds of configurations, I actually use two of the most common (locate the) "oeminfo.ini" lines. That work in almost all the installations. The few where even those two don't work, I just tailor the line for that one PC.

The tip is to get you an easy way of getting to the oeminfo.ini file opened and editable.

[ChuckE]

As for the 256 colors of the OEMLOGO.BMP file, here are some samples that you can try out. In each of these just copy and rename to OEMLOGO.BMP in your system32 folder (rename your current one first, if you want to keep it!).

I have several different sizes here. In each, if you open them up in Paint, or some other graphic viewer, you will see 5 colors (red, green, blue, yellow, black and white - please, I am aware that black and white are not "colors" but for BMPs it is counted).

But it you open up your SysProps you will just see 5. And if you look real close, with some graphic viewer, you will see that the one color that is "transparent" is the same color as the bottom left pixel.

The previous info I posted, I copied from some other website:
"the color of the second pixel from the left on the bottom row of pixels becomes transparent throughout the image if it is saved in 8 bit/256 color mode. A 24 bit image with potentially millions of colors will work, but cannot use transparency."
WAS WRONG! Sorry! I should have verified first.

It turns out it is the bottom left corner pixel.
And it doesn't matter if the picture is over-sized (bigger than the 180x114 in WinXP) even by a large amount. The bottom left corner pixel of the BMP is the key, "Transparent" color.

One other OEMLOGO I created here is just cute. It shows in the SysProps page as an oval with Snoopy in it. However, if you open it up in a graphic viewer you will see that the color outside of the oval is a putrid green, but it becomes transparent in the SysProps page.

[hewee]

Ok I will play around later.
Thanks for the new info. I just copyed it to save it.
I know also looking at images I have seen in image viewers your see lots of color background from white to black. But open then in a image program they have a transparency so you do not see it.
Like in PhotoImpact if I go and make a new image a box comes up and I can pick a background color or pick a transparent.
But when I save the image as a .ufo in PhotoImage the thumbnail of that image that has a transparent background will show what ever color is set for the background color. You will not see it if you go and add that image to another image but that background color or the info for it is there still.
I have got xnview too. I do not use it much to view image but I can get lots of things to show up viewing images with xnview that I do not see in other image programs or viewers. Like how I guess someone made a rough cut and the erased the rest of the background from the image but I can see the background they erased.

[ChuckE]

The ability of using a color, or colors, for a transparency effect depends not in what is used to make it, but in whatever is used to view or use it.

The oemlogo examples that I provided were made by MS Paint, which doesn't "know" transparency. It is the Windows OS, as used in the display of that image within the area of the SysProps page.

If you have an image making tool that provides for some transparency effect, and you create an image, it may not have that effect used in any other tool, like for example MS Paint.

As I mentioned, if you create a BMP file, that is no more than 8 bit color depth, and that lower left pixel color is used elsewhere in the same file, then that color will be "transparent" when viewed through the SysProps OEMLOGO area. How you create that image, does not matter.

[hewee]

Thanks Chuck. Have you played around or know if doing the same thing to make the transparency effect for the oemlogo will have that same effect if you layer it over another image? Like with MSPaint you can use the edit paste from. I know in the pass I have done that with a .bmp and the background did not show up. But it made of been made like your saying ow to do the logo.

[ChuckE]

It depends upon the resultant image. If it meets the condition I said, (8 bit color depth) the lower left corner pixel color is the transparent color. How you got there, how you created the image, does not matter.

If you had an image that you thought the lower left corner color, which should appear transparent, and yet it isn't, then you probably did not meet the 8 bit color depth.

Don't think that just because your image has 256 colors. or less, that it meets the color depth requirement. That is not it. You could have an image that has even just ONE COLOR, and yet it has a 24bit color depth. Color depth is a limit to the number of colors possible, whether used or not.

[hewee]

Darn what was I thinking. I remember now the image had all this white background so that botton 2nd px was the color that would make all the background transparent color.
But if you just open it in paint you would see it. But I was doing some just playing around and had that image on the desktop and I had wonder what the "paste from" would do and I used that image and it had a transparent color for the background.

So in a way you can do layers in Paint but not the easy way.

[ChuckE]

Paint does not do layers, that is a whole other term that you are confusing with Paint's ability to copy a 2nd image on top of your existing image. That is not layers.

Again, I emphasize that the transparency pixel of ANY 8 bit color depth bitmap image, as utilized by the Windows (95, 98, NT, ME, 2k, and XP) OS for the display of the SysProps page is the bottom left pixel, NOT the 2nd pixel.

[hewee]

I know it does not do layers. I was meaning how I took a image and used the paste from and it was layed on top of the image I had and that image was not showing the background.

[hewee]

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