Personalize the Windows 7 Logon Screen

I was starting to get tired of the Windows 7 logon background, which in my opinion, looks like a default Twitter theme. So I did some research and found that Microsoft has made it especially easy to change this background. You don’t even need to reboot.

To do this, simply follow these Steps:

1. Open Start –> In “Search for Files” or in “Run”, Type: “Regedit”  to open the registry editor
2. In the Registry Editor Locate the following Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
3. Backup this registry key (always back up the registry key your about to go mucking around with)
4. If the OEMBackground DWORD Value does not exist, create it by right clicking the Background key and selecting New –> DWORD (32-Bit) Value and give it a name of “OEMBackground”
5. Open OEMBackground and change its value to “1” (default =0)
6. Close the Registry Editor
7. Open Explorer and browse to the following Folder: %windir%\Windows\System32\oobe
8. Create a folder named “info” in the oobe folder
9. Create a folder named Backgrounds in the info folder
10. You should now have the following folder path: %windir%\Windows\System32\oobe\info\Backgrounds

     

    You may need to change the permissions on the Backgrounds folder by adding the Modify permission or you may get an error when trying to save there and you may be prompted by UAC to allow the file copy.

11. Copy the background image file you want to use into the Backgrounds folder
12. The Background image file should follow these parameters:

• File Name: backgroundDefault.jpg
• Format: JPG
• Size: No greater than 256kb
• Dimensions: The image should be the same size as your screen resolution or it may be either expanded or compressed to fit the screen

To roll back your changes, you can either reverse the steps above or change the image name to anything other than backgroundDefault.jpg

Adjusting Button Shadow

You can also change the shadow for the logon screen buttons.

To do this:

1. Open Regedit again and navigate to : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\
2. Create a new DWORD Value “ButtonSet” within the “LogonUI” key
3. Give this new key a value of 0, 1 or 2 depending on the amount of desired shadow:

• Light Shadow = 0
• Dark Shadow = 1
• No Shadow = 2

That’s pretty much it. Enjoy

Update: May 1, 2010

After changing my desktop theme, I notice my logon background reverted back to the original. It seems the action of changing the desktop theme resets the value of OEMBackground  back to zero. 

For a more permanent solution, instead of changing:

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

Instead, Use the following Policy key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\UseOEMBackground

Alternatively, just copy the following into a text file, rename the file with a .reg extension and double click it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System]
"UseOEMBackground"=dword:00000001