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Changing the Startup and Shutdown Animation

October 23, 2009 10:00 am By 6 Comments

MobileJaw reader Tisha, asked about how to remove the AT&T animation that takes place on startup and shutdown of your device. This is the same animation used on any of the Windows Mobile 3G smartphones that AT&T carries – the one where 3G clouds fly by and leaving a trail that transforms into the cellular reception bars. On other carriers this a different animation or sometimes just an image that shows the carriers logo or something simple like that.

The steps below will walk you through removing this animation and there’s even details about what you need to do to display your own graphic. One special note – If you have a Samsung Jack or Propel Pro, you can not remove the startup animation. If you do this, the screen driver fails to load and you can no longer see anything on the device. You can, however, connect to the device using Pocket Controller Pro and reinstate the startup animation and all will be fine again. Again, this is only a problem on the Propel Pro and the Jack. All other devices have not displayed this behaviour.

1) The first thing you need to do is remove the application lock from your device (Windows Mobile Standard or non-touch devices only). To do this, check out my other post about Removing Application Lock.

2) Install some sort of registry editing tool. For on device editing, which is all that would be required in this case, I would recommend PHM’s free registry editor.

3) Run the registry editor and browse to HKLM / System / Startup / 1

4) Here you should find a value by the name of DLL. Highlight the value DLL and press the Menu / Delete to completely remove it. (Samsung Jack and Propel Pro users – do not delete this value!)

5) Browse to HKLM / System /Shutdown / 1 and you should find another value with the name DLL. Highlight and remove this one as well.

At this point, you should no longer have the startup or shutdown animations. You can reboot your phone and test it out. But I’m not done with this hack. Instead of the carriers animation, why not add your own image? Here’s the steps to add your own graphic on startup and shutdown.

6) In the registry editor under HKLM / System / Shutdown or HKLM / System / Startup create a new Value and set the type to be String.

7) Name this new value “Splash” without the quote,s and set the value to be the complete path to your picture. I recommend against putting this picture on the storage card. It should be on the main memory of the device.

8) Save your new value and back out of the registry editor. Reboot your phone and enjoy the new graphics!

In case your looking for something to replace that image with, here’s a very fancy Mobile Jaw logo in 320×320, 320×240, and 240×320. I just placed the size I need in the My Documents folder and then set the Splash value to “\My Documents\MobileJawSplash320240.png” – without the quotes. Enjoy!

If you have any problems, let me know. Or if you just feel like sharing your success, I would love to hear about it. :)

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About Mike Temporale

Mike Temporale has written 498 posts on Mobile Jaw..

Mike Temporale grew up fascinated by computers since an early age. His first hands on with a computer came when he was 7 years old and a travelling lab of Commodore PET computers made a stop at his school. Hooked on the new world these devices offered, he took any chance possible to get in front of a computer. When Compaq launched the iPaq 3600, he was hooked again. This time on a whole new world of mobile computing. Today, Mike spends his day helping clients deploy and manage their mobile device around the world. From installing custom software, to locking and securing data, and everything in between. He is also the Editor in Chief at Mobile Jaw - a site focused on today's mobile world.

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  • http://twitter.com/mobilejaw/status/5097344002 MobileJaw

    Changing the Startup and Shutdown Animation – http://tinyurl.com/yg87kem

  • Tisha

    Hi Mike,

    What a bummer that this doesn’t work on the Jack! I saw another blog where the person tried to edit the DLL and include their own image files for the animation, but I don’t think that worked either. I wonder if the display driver is loaded via the DLL, and that’s why deleting it impacts loading the driver. Maybe someone (more knowledgeable than me obviously) will come up with a hack/tweak for this someday (sigh). What about at least silencing that annoying sound? I’m wondering if at the very least the .wav files can be edited to simply be silent/blank sound files? I think I might try that to see if it works…

  • http://www.MobileJaw.com Mike Temporale

    Yeah, I looked at hacking up the DLL too but I didn’t have any luck. I was hoping to break the call to in the DLL to play the animation and the sound, but instead it broke everything.

    As for killing just the sound – there’s no audio file on the device for this sound. At least not one that I was able to locate. I think it must be stored in the DLL along with the animation.

    I’m disappointed that AT&T / Samsung added this restriction.

  • Tisha

    I thought they were start.wav and stop.wav in the windows directory. I’ll have to check…

  • http://www.MobileJaw.com Mike Temporale

    Oh man… if those are the files and I managed to miss them somehow….

  • Tisha

    Actually, it’s understandable. Every windows system I’ve worked with has a start.wav and also a startup.wav (also stop.wav and shutdown.wav). These were always used for different purposes. I don’t know about WM, since this is my first experience with it. Anyway, these are the files and I was able to replace them this morning with blank wav files no problem.

    PS/FYI: I still have to use my old XP desktop to overwrite read only files on my phone. I can’t do it from Vista.