A relative of mine took her computer in for some repairs and when she got it back, the guy had installed some weird religious start up screen on it. She asked me if I could try to get it off for her. I have come across some freeware programs to change the startup screens that I can use if nothing else. But, I'd prefer to figure out how to just get thing back to normal without adding a new softwarte program to the machine. Anyone wanna give me some instructions on how to do that? I'd really aoppreciate it. Thanks.

Oh yeah, and if you think it would be better to just install a program, which is best?

My expertise extends to System Restore or just reinstalling Windows.

pre-xp, the startup screen was located in the base c:\ drive. forget the file name though

My experience extends to kicking the ass of someone who would take it on his own to install something on my computer.

Steve

but god is good!

"God is empty...Just like me!"

Ditto. This would have me over the "polite" cliff-edge. Unsolicited church material under my windshield wiper or in conversation ("...at this fabulous church I go to - say, what church do YOU go to?!" I know what you're doing ass-clown, and fucking stop it right this second) is one thing, but when I've PAID someone to work on my pc (which doesn't happen, thank jeebus)... oh man, nuclear-white-hot.

I'd be taking the bill back and asking for my money back. What right did he have to stick some random religious thing on there? How did this assjack know it wouldn't offend her? A report to the BBB is in order, too, and maybe even give a call to a local TV station - I bet they'd LOVE to air a story like that.

I'd also immediately stop payment on the services until my computer was restored to proper order. Hopefully, your family member didn't pay cash.

Report him to someone.

You'll have to use something like Resource Hacker, but frankly I agree with those who say take it back and demand they return it to normal.

Microsoft is a good start if they refuse to do anything. See how they like losing their OEM status.

do a search for all *.jpg's in the windows folder by date and see which one are newest. Hopefully this will lead to the tampered image, that you can replace with a different image of the same name.

(Did he put this on the machine because he found porn on it?)

the windowsXP bootup image isn't a regular .jpg - you'll need to replace the file C:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe

read about it HERE for more information. Be careful, though, as you need to get the correct version of the ntoskernl.exe file, which depends on what service pack you have installed.