Changing the boot splash on an E6400

I recently acquired a Latitude E6400 from a small startup that tanked almost as fast as it came into being, sadly. The machine is in excellent condition, still technically has about 11 months left on the CompleteCare warranty as well which was transferred to my name before they officially went under. They custom ordered these from Dell to get their own "boot splash" screens installed instead of the traditional Dell boot splash, and now since it's mine and that company has vanished from existence, I see no reason to keep that splash screen up every time I boot the PC.

It has no bearing on the machine, I know that, but it's just one of those cosmetic things that irks me to no end.

Having said that, I'm not having much luck at all locating any potential solution to reset or take the boot splash back to the stock Dell one, if possible. I did a pretty thorough search of the Dell community forums, these forums, and of course a general Google search and all I uncovered were a few posts from the mid-2000's related to the Dell SPLASH.EXE tool but a) I can't locate a download for it and b) I'm certain it's not compatible with this E6400 which is just 2 years old (shipped in Oct 2010, actually).

One thing I did find was a post at the Dell community forums where someone stated it's embedded into a chip on the motherboard and there's no way to redo/reset it back to the stock Dell boot splash except by Dell itself by replacing the entire motherboard, which seems a bit counterproductive but, given the huge aftermarket for stolen hardware they could be doing it this way (embedded into the chipset or something) so it can't be easily removed like older ones - this one is not stolen, just for the record: I have the original box, packing, even the original packing order slip info from that failed startup and also double confirmations from Dell that it's now officially mine legally, and I can even get warranty service onsite too which is very cool.

I suppose I could just toss it off my balcony and CompleteCare would replace the entire machine thereby resolving my little cosmetic gripe with the boot splash but, I'd prefer not to go to such extremes.

If anyone has any tips or info or knows for certain that the only solution is to replace the mobo, I'd love to hear it/them. I checked eBay and found a few "new" E6400 motherboards for not too terrible pricing but, again, this machine works great and this is just a little nitpick of sorts I'd love to just handle myself it possible.

While I wasn't able to track down much info, the info I did locate seems to indicate that it can't be done with a simple software tool as was possible years ago, just wanted to get some kind of confirmation on that aspect. If that's the case, I'll live with it (boo hoo, woe is me).

 

Have you tried just re-flashing the BIOS normally?

 

Yep, the A32 most current one as well as flashing an older one (A30) and I still have the company logo there when it fires up. I suppose it's just something I'll have to live with, it's only visible for like 1 second on a cold boot/reboot, not gonna kill me.