Ever wonder what's going on behind that splash screen? Well, now you can find out!

Right click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Edit. Edit BOOT.INI. Add "/SOS" right after "/fastdetect" with a space between. The line will look something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /SOS. When you're finished. The first part, multi(0)..... may not be the same on your machine. Upon restarting, the splash screen will be gone. It can be re-enabled by removing the new switch.