Making a bootscreen is compliacted :\

I have been spending the last two hours pulling my hair out trying to wrap myself around how one exactly creates a custom bootscreen for Windows XP without fucking up your computer.  Looking around, I've read poorly written guides involving downloading propietary programs and having to use them in junction with not one, but two image editing programs.  Is there a simpler way to do this?  Or if there isn't, could someone please explain how exactly extracts the bootscreen and edits an image so its 4bit and 640x480 either automatically or manually?  thanks.

One more thing, format is not the way to fix problems.

Otherwise we would nuke Africa to end with world hunger.