- Alex -

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While we try to bring you useful information on how to make your computer better, sometimes we just can't help ourselves and screw around with something that's a complete waste of time, but fun to do. This article about adding a custom OEM logo to your System Properties is just that: totally useless, but it looks cool.

How Generic Are Your System Properties?

Go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / System / General and take a look. Do you see any manufacturer info? Is it blank? Wanna spice it up with your own custom logo and information? Want your System Properties to look as cool as this?

It's disturbingly easy. Here's how.

OEM Info

Open a text editor, e.g. Notepad and create a file with the following text:

[General]
Manufacturer=(your text here)
Model=(your text here)

[Support Information]
Line1=(your text here)
Line2=(your text here)
Line3=(your text here)
Line4=(your text here)

Insert your own text where indicated without the parentheses. Add more lines under the Support Information section if you like. You can put in anything you want so let your creative juices play freely. If you got writer's block right now, don't worry. You can always change it later when you finally think of something snappy to insert.

Now save this file as OEMINFO.INI on your hard drive in the Windows\System folder. If your Windows directory is C:\Windows, you save this file in C:\Windows\System. If your Windows directory is D:\WinNT then save this file in D:\WinNT\System. You get the idea.

OEM Logo

For the logo you'll need to be a little bit creative one more time. Use a graphics editor (if needed, download a free one from our graphics freeware collection) to create a bitmap file that you want to use as your logo. The logo bitmap must be 256 colors and either sized 96x96 (when using small fonts) or 120x120 (when using large fonts).

Save the logo bitmap as OEMLOGO.BMP into the same folder as the OEMINFO.INI file. That's it! Now go to Start / Settings / Control Panel / System / General and take a look. Looks a lot better, doesn't it? There should be a button labeled Support Information. Push it and you'll see the lines you entered in the Support Information section of the OEMINFO.INI file. Voila! Granted, you probably just wasted half an hour of your time on this silly little gimmick, but who cares? This is cool!

PC911 OEM Logo

If you're too lazy to make your own logo or info file, don't worry - we got you covered. Download this tiny zip file here and extract it into your Windows\System directory as explained above. It contains a custom PC911 logo and info file to make your System Properties look really slick. You're welcome to customize the OEMINFO file further by editing it with any text editor.

No Logo?

What? Your logo doesn't show? Double-check that you put both files into the correct directory. Also make sure that you did enter something in the Manufacturer line of the OEMINFO.INI file. If this entry is blank none of the info will show.

Have fun!

- Alex -

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