I know ubuntu has something like this where it has a graphical loading bar instead of listing what drivers/things are being loaded.

I'm working with my father who complains about his laptop problems which relate to almost every single thing that Linux provides (complaints of bad battery life, viruses from porn, paying $500 for MS office, computer runs "slow", only uses it for e-mail, etc) and he won't use Linux because there's no shiny interface and there isn't a commercial for it on television. He even goes so far as to tell me not to tell people about linux because he still thinks it's hard to use even after using gnome.
I figured I should show him up by completely fooling him into thinking he's still on Windows.

I made GNOME look exactly like Vista with GNOmenu, using a custom metacity skin, and making a custom panel background image.

The only thing I can't replicate is the startup process where it just says "Microsoft Corporation" and a loading bar.

If I use ubuntu, can I change that image? Or is there some kind of bash script that I can do to load an image? Even a static image would work fine, he might buy it.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

I believe you can, not sure how but a search on the Ubuntu forums should help. I would just add that if you use the Microsoft Corp one you might be breaching copy right?