Just some thoughts:

Does the background image, and the progress bar have the EXACT same palette? Meaning 16 colors (4bit). All the colors have to be the EXACT same, in the EXACT same places in the palette. I find irfanview great for this task.

Is the gradient you are using part of the background, or the progress bar? I would personally make it part of the background.

Make sure that you are using .jpg (can .gifs be used??) for BOTH progress bar and background.

Make sure that neither image is using ANY transparancy what so ever (including complete transparancy).

Thats really all I can think of. The previews lie to me when I used to make bootskins also. I could have 256bit (whatever 16.7 million colours is ) backgrounds/progress bars look perfect in the previews, and look like sh!t on bootup. Clearly, this was just testing, I knew I could only use 16 color bootskins.

I hope something I meantioned above helps you out. If not, I hope someone else can help you .

Same palette/transparancy I think are the issues...

try grabbing a rectangle off the middle of the screen (below the words and above where you have the bar) and use that

The colour for the progress animation background is taken from the darkest colour on the bootskin image. There's no way to change this behaviour.

Good tip   

Thanks for that Cavan1!!!

I never knew that...*eagerly goes to make some boots*

Thanks Cavan1 ,


I had already worked out that it must be the first indexed colour that is the background, so i made the image negative then saved the palette, turns out that it looks awesome negative, even better than the origional in my opinion, i quickly finished it and i should release it soon .


I have made other alienware things and alienware still haven't got back to me about permission, does anyone have any contacts in Alienware or know how i could upload it without permission, but stating that they wuld not get back to me?


Heres a pic of the Dark AlienMorph

You will probably have to keep this one to yourself, it cannot be accepted without permission. If Alienware choose not to respond, then you'll just have to accept that as a no 

They're fine, as monochrome boots go, but there's no loophole...