14 DAY TRIAL // Just in case you were holding your breath for custom boot screen support in Windows 7, it might be a good idea to exhale right about now. Personalization only went so far when it came to Windows 7, Microsoft revealed. Karen Wong, a program manager on the Core User Experience feature team, indicated that end-users would not be able to interfere with the boot sequence of Windows 7 in order to introduce their own content designed to replace the default Windows logo animation. "This is not something we will support in Windows 7," Wong stated.
Windows 7 will only allow personalization on the end-users' part once the boot process is completed. As was the case with previous releases of Windows, users will be able to change the desktop background, system sounds, colors, and opt for a variable GUI experience with the Aero color schemes. In this regard, Microsoft is already offering themes and wallpapers for the Windows 7 Beta Builds 7000, and promises to continue doing so in the future. But no custom boot animations are taken into account.
"The reasons for this should be pretty clear, which is that we cannot guarantee the security of the system to allow for arbitrary elements to be loaded into memory at boot time. In the early stages of starting Windows, the system needs to be locked down and execute along a very carefully monitored and known state, as tools such as firewalls and anti-virus checking are not yet available to secure the system. And, of course, even though we’re sure everyone would follow the requirements around image size, content, etc. due to performance, we would not want to build in all the code necessary to guarantee that all third parties would be doing so," Wong added.
As far as the Windows 7 boot process goes, Microsoft wants it to be left untouched. Fact is that malicious code exploiting a customizable boot process is not a scenario the Redmond company is willing to risk. "One of our design goals of Windows 7 was around making sure there are ample opportunities to express yourself and to make sure your PC is really your PC, and so we hope that you’ll understand why this element is one we need to maintain consistently," Wong concluded by saying.