You can tell by opening Control Panel → System → General tab → look at the picture in the lower left corner, usually displaying the vendor's logo and their company name, internet address, support e-mail and/or phone number in the lower right corner. You'll also notice a "Support Information..." button below the text area, which shows company or system details when left-clicked.
This looks cool, but it would look even better if my own logo, name and computer specs would show up instead. :)
Easy, just create/edit OEMINFO.INI (a plain text file located in %windir%\System on Win95/98/ME or in %windir%\System32 on WinNT4/2000/XP/2003) with Notepad, and add/modify your own lines under these sections:
- [General]
Manufacturer=Type manufacturer name here
Model=Type computer model name here
SupportURL=Type URL here [may NOT display without dedicated software!]
LocalFile=Type file name here [may NOT display without dedicated software!][OEMSpecific]
SubModel=Type submodel name here [may NOT display without dedicated software!]
SerialNo=Type serial number here [may NOT display without dedicated software!]
OEM1=Type OEM1 name here [may NOT display without dedicated software!]
OEM2=Type OEM2 name here [may NOT display without dedicated software!][Support Information]
Line1=Type something here
Line2=Type something here
Line3=Type something here
.
.
.
LineX=Type something here
OEMINFO.INI supports more than 200 lines [I have no idea of the maximum limit allowed :)] under the [Support Information] section, each numbered correspondingly in ascending sequence, up to a maximum of 254 characters per line after the equal sign. You can even have blank lines, or the lines can be empty themselves (after the equal sign), and all (even special ASCII) characters typed after the first equal sign are displayed (even multiple equal signs).
Optionally you can enclose typed text with quotation marks, they won't be displayed.
Exception: the first tab (which normally adds 8 spaces) is displayed as a single space, but anything following the second tab is not displayed.
To disable/comment/remark a line (make it invisible) type a semicolon (;) in front of it (just like in any other Windows INI file), and it won't be displayed anymore.
The "Support Information" button acts like a "mini" text viewer (no editing allowed within the box though). :) Click it, and you can use the left mouse button drag to highlight all lines, and then right-click to Copy the entire text (including the empty lines, if any) to the Clipboard, which you can Paste into any text editor.
Then create/edit a custom OEMLOGO.BMP (a bitmap logo, residing in the same folder as OEMINFO.INI = see above), which must be maximum 180x114 pixels in size [larger pictures are automatically cropped (downsized) to "fit" the "window", and smaller ones are displayed with a background surrounding them (mine is 154x114)], and must have 256 colors [RGB encoded, 24-bit color depth (16 million colors) also allowed], in BMP format (uncompressed Windows BitMaP), you can use MS Paint (found as C:\Program Files\Accessories\MsPaint.exe by default), the primitive but free painting program bundled with Windows or a better 3rd party utility (most are freeware).
Note that you need to fill at least 2 or 3 of the corners (1 pixel size) of your OEMLOGO.BMP file with a "blank" color (white), to have it display properly. The white color is shown as transparent (useful as background if the bitmap logo is smaller than 180x114).
Alternatively you can use OEM Logo Stamper [530 KB, nag freeware] to customize both OEMINFO.INI + OEMLOGO.BMP.
When you're done, just left-click your mouse once on an empty spot on your Desktop background, and then hit F5 to refresh. Now you can open the System Properties General tab to admire your "handy" work. :)FYI: See OEM Logo + Info in "action".