Customize the VirtualBox BIOS Image 🌱

From the VirtualBox documentation:
The image must be an uncompressed 256 color BMP file without color space information (Windows 3.0 format). The image must not be bigger than 640 x 480.

Method 1 - Editing the VirtualBox VM XML

  1. Make sure the VM being modified is not running
  2. Close the VirtualBox UI
  3. Open File Explorer
  4. Navigate to the VM directory
  5. Open the .vbox file in a text editor
  6. Search for BIOS
  7. Add the following line inside the BIOS node

    <logo displaytime="0" fadein="true" fadeout="true" imagepath="C:\Full\Path\to\BIOS.bmp" />

  8. Change the imagePath to the full path to the custom .bmp file
  9. Save the changes to the .vbox file
  10. Start the VM normally to test

Method 2 - Using the VBoxManage Command

  1. Make sure the VM being modified is not running
  2. Launch command prompt as administrator and run the following commands
    cd %programfiles%\Oracle\VirtualBox
    VBoxManage modifyvm "CaseSensitiveVMName" --bioslogoimagepath "C:\Full\Path\to\BIOS.bmp"
  3. Start the VM normally to test