To customize the logon screen wallpaper, you can do one of the following:

• Find a freeware program to create it for you

or

• DIY

Since doing it yourself is so much more fun… do the following:

• Click Windows-key+R and type regedit
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
• Create (if it does not exist) the DWord OEMBackground and set the value to 1
• Close regedit and open Windows Explorer
• Navigate to %windir%\system32\oobe
• Create (if they do not exist) the subdirectories \info\backgrounds so that the full path is %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds
• Put your desired logon screen image into this directory and call it backgroundDefault.jpg. This image must be less than 256KB. Thanks, Christian, for pointing out the slip as of the quantifier.

Log out and you have a new background on the logon screen.

…aaaaaand – if you happen to change the theme in W7, the OS reset the OEMBackground to 0. So, you have to set it back to 1.

Categories: Windows