Visual Studio Splash Screen

15 Apr 2010 09:57

The Visual Studio 2010 splash screen is stored in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\vs000223.dat. It’s a hidden file in PNG format.

The splash screen for Visual Studio 2012 is in ...\11.0\vs000223.dat.

It’s generated by the installer; to recreate it:

  1. Fix the registered owner information for Windows (see below).
  2. Delete the vs000223.dat file.
  3. Run Visual Studio. The first time you do this, the splash screen will have no user information.
  4. Run Visual Studio again. This time your updated user information will be shown.

Windows Registered Owner Information

Note to self: Immediately after installing Windows 8, double-check the registered owner information before installing anything else. The Windows registered owner information is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, in the RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization values.

It’s also in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, and the two keys don’t appear to be mirrored, unlike HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.