No GUI Boot in Vista

You have to use the built-in System Configuration utility in order to change Vista boot screen to a prettier one featuring an aurora. To access this utility, first press Start and click Run. Enter msconfig and hit the Enter key. Navigate to the Boot tab, and tick the check mark for the "No GUI Boot" option as shown in the screenshot above. Save your changes by clicking OK or Apply.

Windows Vista will tell you that your computer needs to be restarted in order to apply the changes. Press OK and in just a few seconds, you should see your new and improved Vista boot screen!

Not only you can change the Vista boot screen to a "no GUI" version that has no progress bar, you can also customize it to use a picture of your own. The easiest way to do that is to use Tune-Up Utilities. This program isn't free, but you can download a 15 day free trial, perform your Vista boot screen change and then simply uninstall it. However, it has a lot of useful features like cleaning your registry and optimizing your computer for better performance, so you might want to keep it as well.

Changing Vista boot screen is done using a utility called TuneUp Styler. Launch TuneUp utilities and select Boot screen in the "Customize Windows" section. A window will load as shown in the screenshot above. Click Add and choose Load boot screen from file. Select the new picture and click Apply to set it as your new startup screen.

All popular image formats are accepted. Keep in mind that your image will be automatically resized to 1024 x 768 resolution, so if your image has a different height and width ratio, you might want to crop it first in your favorite graphics editing program to avoid stretching.

This will work with 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista, as well as whatever Service Pack you have installed. Simply restart your computer to see the new loading screen.