e-clecticism: Win 7 Logon Screen

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Win 7 Logon Screen

Because I use Windows 7 with a logon screen image that is one of my own photographs instead of the default image that Microsoft provide, I often get asked how I managed to change it. I thought it might be nice to share it here with you all so here is my tutorial. Only try this if you are confident in changing settings on your machine. I am not responsible if you mess things up. :-) As always, click the images to enlarge them.

Firstly you need to run RegEdit and navigate to the following key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

Here you should see a setting called OEMBackground. If you are not able to see this value then right-click in the right pane, point to the New submenu and create a new DWORD value with this name. Set the value to 1 by double clicking on OEMBackground.

Close RegEdit and navigate to the following folder.

C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

There is a chance that the folder will not exist and if that is the case you will need to create it. Now copy your desired picture to the Background folder. Remember that the picture’s size can’t be more than 256 kb. The name of image must be backgroundDefault.jpg.