How to change the background image of your logon screen on Windows 7 with picture illustrationss.

How to change the background image of your logon screen on Windows 7

Windows 7 provides the interface for users to change the background image on the logon screen on the user's computers. This can be achieved in the the Registry. Registry can be access when a user has administrator's previlage. When you edit the registry and change other things they might affect your system's performance. Going into the registry you need to have a better understanding of windows. Here i am going to tell you how to change your logon page background to any picture of your choice.

Open Registry

To open you registry, press the start button and type 'regedit' the registry will appear as the first search result, select  and click to open the registry. If prompt to enter the Administrator enter the password and press the enter key to continue.

The Registry

On the registry you will see your computer at the top left corner of the window which expand a tree hierachy of folders. Here we want to change the background image of the logon screen so we are going to locate the folder  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. 

STEP 2

Select SOFTWARE from the dropdown list

STEP 3

Select Microsoft

STEP 4

Select Windows 

STEP 5

Select CurrentVersion

STEP 6

Select Authentication

STEP 7

Select  LogonUI

STEP 8

Select Background

STEP 9

Got to the left pane of the window and double the OEMBackground to change its properties.

 

STEP 10

Here we are going to change the properties of the OEMBackground.

Type 1 into the Value Data of the OEMBackground, by default the value is set 0. Next move to the base and select the Hexadecimal if it is change to Decimal and click on OK to finish.

Next open your computer and goto the C: (Local Disk) drive to add the image you want to display as the background.

When the C: drive is open double on Windows and locate the a folder named System32

 double click to open and find another folder oobe in the oobe environment right Click to create a new folder, name it info and double click on it to open.

in the info folder create another folder and name it backgrounds. sometimes the folders are created by Default in will only have to copy the image you wish to add into the backgrounds folder and rename it.

Open the background folder, copy the image you desire to be your background image into the backgrounds folder and rename it to backgroundDefault. The image should be in jpg format and it should be less than 256kb in size.

When this is set the effect should take place immediately no need to restart your computer for the effects. Just log off and see the changes.

Make the Background image static

That is done for you but there is a little problem to solve. You will notice that when you change the windows theme, the logon background will be replaced with the one in the theme. So lets try to make the background static by configuring some little settings.

Click on the start button and type "gpedit.msc" click on the search result to open the settings.

Next Step

It will open Local Group Policy Editor, on the left side of the window drill down to a folder named Logon and click on it.

On the right side of the window select 'Always use custom logon background'  double click on it to set the properties. In the property settings select 'enable' and click on 'Ok'. 

Now your background will be set static.

Try it out and enjoy your Logon Background of your choice.