Discussion on:

Change and customize Windows 7's Logon screen wallpaper

Are you looking to customize Windows logon screens, wallpapers, and other UI parts? If you use Greg's tweak to change your logon screen, how about sending it along to me so I can create a gallery to show it and everyone else's off?

This is handy for people who want to modify things for "fun". But I agree with Jeff. For personal use there is not much to be gained.

I used to change wallpaper and sound schemes etc in Win95 Win98 Win2K and XP - but since Vista I have not bothered. Perhaps this is because the designers have got better at creating something attractive and not too intrusive. Or perhaps I'm less bothered by recent ones.

The Windows Startup sound in 98 and Win2K was SO depressing! One of the first things I would do was to change this to the Win95 standard startup sound (created by Brian Eno).

The procedure you outline certainly beats hacking into DLL files like in XP.

This is good to know for curious minds who are not worried about going into the registry. But for the rest, there's LogonStudio from Stardock.com which does this in a more intuitive and simple way. The program is free for personal use, and has a nice interface. The program does all the tweaking automatically.

This tweak did not work for me. I checked and re-checked everything and no go. So I will have to try this LogonStudio. Thanks for the tip!!

I've also checked, rechecked, changed resolutions and still no go.

It's a nifty tweak, but for my personal computer I don't see the point. I see the logon screen for maybe 3 seconds each time I log onto the computer. I can see it being useful for OEM's or resellers to advertise their business or people that just have to tweak everything and make their OS "their own."

Would be nice if Microsoft made it as easy to set the logon screen background (almost) as easily as the desktop background.

Sound nice, I might give it a try. But if you want to revert back, how do you do that? I need to know that before I would give this a try.

Just undo the changes made in the instructions given here.

You can just reverse the process.

In fact, just changing your image name to be something other than backgroudDefault will revert back to the Windows default.

We do this as a part of our base build with our logo. Is there a great reason to do so? Probably not but we like the 'branding'.

The white font color is a little hard to pick up aginst our image, does anyone have any info on tweaking that? Thanks for this info, I will play with the shadow to see if that helps.

The steps above is the geek meothod.

This utility does the same thing with a few clicks.

http://tweaks.com/software/tweakslogon/

"256 KB? Oh that should be enough for anybody."

LOL... Sound familiar?

So that totally did not work - instead I now get a snail's pace bootup where every desktop icon draws itself slowly. And no wall paper change in the boot screen; there is a "background.bmp" file that is Untouchable in the System32 oobe folder that is the boot screen. You need permission from the TrustedInstaller to change it.
So now I will try rolling back to undo the damage.
This is a WIN7 pro clean install on a AMD quadcore system.

Ok, so i don;t have an OEM version. So how can i do this? (I cannot find the OEMBackground value in the registry)

Our State has implemented tighter security protocols. One of them is to put a warning of improper use in the logon page. We have already figured this out and are implementing it as we get to the over 2500 computers within our organization.

I wonder if there is a way to do this in the MDT tool?

I just did it as he wrote it, I just followed the steps. Neat.

I run Windows 7 64 bit. So far that Value does not exist in my registry. I backed up the registry, added the key as discussed and voila! I'm in love! I have some really nice images from an online 3D graphics source and some of his older work is small enough to work - and correctly sized for my 1920x1280 resolution

I have Skin Studio, Window Blinds and Logon Studio. Well worth the money and no need to edit the registry. For under $20.00 I can change the Logon in seconds. Now if someone could come up with a way to change the boot screen I would love that.

Nice article. Now changing the Windows 7 login screen has never been easier. Could you please write something on how to change the Windows 7 boot screen.

If like me, your going to be deploying Windows 7 to a large number of different machines and configurations, you can create a number of different wallpapers and put them into the same folder, but name them the following (without the brackets):
backgroundDefault.jpg
background768x1280.jpg (0.6)
background900x1440.jpg (0.625)
background960x1280.jpg (0.75)
background1024x1280.jpg (0.8)
background1280x1024.jpg (1.25)
background1024x768.jpg (1.33-)
background1280x960.jpg (1.33-)
background1600x1200.jpg (1.33-)
background1440x900.jpg (1.6)
background1920x1200.jpg (1.6)
background1280x768.jpg (1.66-)
background1360x768.jpg (1.770833-)


Windows will then find your current configuration using calls to GetSystemMetrics. These values are used in the computation of the screen width (w)/height (h) ratio. For example, my desktop resolution is 1920x1200. The ratio, computed by the division of w/h, is 1.6:1.

The backgroundDefault.jpg image is loaded and stretched-to-fit when a resolution/ratio-specific background cannot be found. The other resolution/ratio-specific files are self-explanatory. If the background cannot be loaded (e.g. image physically too large, incorrect ratio, etc.), the default SKU-based image is loaded from imagesres.dll.

UAC uses a single desktop so my second monitor turns off and needs to be restarted. Can I set UAC to use the second monitor as well?

Excellent post!

Thanks for posting the info. It's been a lot of fun to play with different backgrounds. I do have one question in regards to the button shadows. When a user logs in, they do the ctrl-alt-del and then get the campus agreement to which they click OK and then login. We would prefer to use a somewhat lighter background, but this makes it somewhat difficult to see the campus agreement (since it is a white text). Also, the OK and Switch User buttons are very light. I played with the Shadow options, but this only seems to change it when the button is hovered over. Is there a way to make the buttons darker in general as well as the campus agreement text. Or can we change the color of the text?

Here's a stumper: now how do I take a screenshot of my awesome new login screen? Obviously "Print Screen" didn't work because W7 clears the clipboard when you log on/off. I tried using Ultra VNC, but it closes the connection when you lock the machine. Is there any way to do this without running a virtual machine and loading Windows 7 on it?

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Hi,

I did exactly what was mentioned in the post but im not able to see the customized screen for some reason, could you help me telling where i might went wrong.

Thanks
Vardhan

If you had done EXACTLY what was mentioned in the post, it would have worked unless you are using a company computer with group policies that prevent making those changes.

Where you went wrong is simply that you did NOT do exactly what was listed in the post. -- if you want to try it again, I recommend printing out a copy of the steps then following them exactly.

After a week or two something is changing the registry entry back to 0, which brings back the Win7 background. So far it has happened twice. Any ideas on how to make this change stick?

Is there a Group Policy defining this entry?

Probably you can just create your own ADM file and then copied over the required file(s) to the folder [which you'll need to create].
If you are using the OEM image [Dell, HP, ...], you don't need to do anything as everything has been done except copying over your file(s).

It looks like the registry value is being changed when I change the display theme. Once the theme is changed and I reboot the computer, the registry value is back to 0.

...Because when you tell Windows to use a theme, you are telling it to use a whole group of pre-defined settings, which undoubtedly includes using the theme's default logon screen graphic.

This works. But...be sure to follow it completely. For example I use Maxthon as browser and at the place where the registry key appears, my browser doesn't display the whole text, so I select the whole line and the next one, copy, then paste it in a run dialogue and then check the text. In my case if I wouldn't do this I would have created a OEMBackground key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background . So pay close attention. THIS really works!

Why is the display problem in W7 IE9? Doesn't show the text completely in IE9 or Maxthon. It simply breakes the line and doesn't display the rest? Could you check this?

hey great tutorial about the background, although i followed everything exactly my logon back still wont appear... also, there was already an 'info' and 'background' folder the the oobe one which confused me. is there maybe a finishing bit that got missed from the website? all i done was close the folder after i copied my background in.

I followed the instructions perfectly, and that was the problem. Name the file backgroundDefault , but omit the .jpg portion. The file should already be a jpeg. It'll actually give it the name backgroundDefault.jpg.jpg if you change the name as described.

I followed all the instructions and it didn't work. The background is a jpg file, so I don't know what else to do.

Thanks.

Many thanks for this article. I have just switched back from a Mac to a PC after 3 years and it has taken me soo long to set things back up.
The shop that I got the new laptop from left their company wallpaper on it so I really wanted to change it over to something with my kids on. Following your guide(to the letter!!) worked a treat.
Thank you!

I like the information I have found on this site so much I actually decided to join. But I do have questions about this article. First I see you list OEM for the O.S. on this tip. What / Where is the information if you do not have the OEM version? Second I am still running vista 32bit with all updates on a laptop. What are the steps for this older program? I have found stuff on other sites, but the information is so old it refers to not being compatible with vista SP1. One other thing I heard a rumor about just adding HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background key. Is this even possible with out causing problems in a NON-OEM version?

What / Where is the information if you do not have the OEM version? Second I am still running vista 32bit with all updates on a laptop

• .www.androidwallpaper.net

What are the steps for this older program?

For those of you who like to modify a lot of look an feel and other commonly modified settings in windows, please try TweakNow Powerpack 2011. Of course, you can get in trouble with this tool, but it does take a lot of effort and ignoring the prompts and warnings.
It will make all of the settings shown here in an automated fashion. Lots of cool stuff to change as well.....

I do this steps but did not work for me.
I am using windows 7 Ultimate I re-checked everything and no go
what should I do?

I have loaded and built the Login wall paper and now everyone would like to run it as a normal background. Is this possible. I have tried to relocate the file into my screen saver location to no avail. Any possible way??

GREAT little customization! If/when one changes the Windows theme, the DWORD value will have to be reset to 1 if one wants to maintain the custom logon screen.

I love how easy this was to implement. However, I have a question, I have a dual monitor setup...is there anyway to get the picture on both monitors?

Sir ,

After doing all the procedure unable to change the background picture . then what should i do ? please tel me as soon as possible

I find it has to be under 250 KB for it to work. I'm not sure why. Oh well, at least it works!

These instructions worked like a charm, thanks. I put together able to build a small little tool that does the same thing, if you don't want to fiddle with the registry. It also gets around the JPEG and file size limitation. You can find it here: http://www.simplygoodcode.com/2012/08/change-windows-7-logon-screen-wallpaper.html

Thanks again.

I followed the instructions and made sure I've done it right but when I go to the login screen it is completely black, can't even see the user icon. Does anyone now how to fix it (except by changing back)?

Thanks a lot Mr. Greg Shultz! Its really helpuful! Your way of explaining the solution is very nice(Using proper images, steps with clearly explaining what to do & how to do... etc)
I love this!