Cry How To...

Set system properties logo and information

On the ‘general’ tab of the ‘System Properties’ dialog (right click ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties’) will normally be displayed the manufacturer’s logo, company and support information (assuming these have bee set up). This note describes how to change this or set net information up from scratch.

There are two parts to updating that panel - the graphic and the text information.

To create the text information, create a text file named ‘OEMINFO.INI’, and place it in ‘c:\winnt\system32’ (or presumably ‘c:\windows\system32’ for a Windows 9x variant). The format of the file is as follows:

[general]
Manufacturer=Some Manufacturer Name

[Support Information]
Line1=For Technical Support contact:
Line2=
Line3=Manufacturer service dept.
.
.

The first section, "[general]", lists the information shown on the System Properties panel. This can take an optional additional line:

Model=…

The second section, "[Support Information]", is optional. If added, then the "Support Information" button will appear. Clicking that button brings up a panel with the text listed.

Be aware that leading spaces are ignored, so if you want to indent some text then be sure to enclose it in quotes, for example:

Line1=For Technical Support contact:
Line2=
Line3=Service dept.
Line4="    Tel: NNN..."

Comments can be added to the OEMINFO.INF file, and these should be preceded by a semicolon ‘;’ for example:

; Information displayed in System Properties
[general]
.
.

To add the graphic, create a ‘.BMP’ file containing the graphic, name it ‘OEMLOGO.BMP’, and place it in the ‘c:\winnt\system32’ directory. Note that the logo will not appear unless the ‘OEMINFO.INI’ file exists and has a ‘Manufacturer’ entry. The size of the graphic may need to be altered to get it to fit correctly in the allocated space. The BMP file should be an RGB BMP file sized about:

96 x 96	Windows 95/98 small fonts
120 x 120	Windows 95/98 large fonts
176 x 110	Windows 2000
172 x 100	Windows XP

These sizes are taken from the Microsoft documentation, but there seems to be some degree of variation even on the same operating system so be prepared to tweak the size of the logo to fit best with your target system.

If all you want to do is to simply remove the manufacturer's logo and information then you can do this by simply deleting or renaming the OEMLOGO.BMP and OEMINFO.INI files.

These notes have been tested with Windows NT4 and Windows 2000.