How to change Welcome/Logon screen background

By on July 1, 2009 31

Surprised ! but its true. Now you can change Welcome/logon screen’s background in Windows 7 and its supported officially. Microsoft has made a change to customize or ability to load JPG images as background of the welcome/logon screen without using any third party software.

Windows 7 Welcome Screen

Although the functionality was designed for ease of OEMs to set their own backgrounds to Welcome/logon screen. It can be done by changing few registry settings and you can set your own background.

How To:

  1. Run Registry Editor and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
  2. Now create a DWORD value called OEMBackground and set it to 1
  3. Now copy your image file (JPG file) into %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds and rename it to backgroundDefault.jpg (By default info & backgrounds folders don’t exist, so create them)

NOTE: Image must be less than 256kb in size.

Applies To:

  • Windows 7 Ultimate
  • Windows 7 Enterprise
  • Windows 7 Professional
  • Windows 7 Home Premium
  • Windows 7 Home Basic
← Older Comments
  • stefpretty

    after i have create them and rename the pic why the screen can’t change to my picture?? must we change the old pic name ?? to what plz help me !!!! i can’t

  • priyank

    hey there is only default in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE..
    nothing software….

  • Steve

    I did as written above and it only changed the Login Window and not the Windows Starting Screen. Please advise!

  • randall

    it works i just did it

  • Clay

    I can’t get this to work. I am running Windows 7 ultimate 64-bit. Any help would be appreciated because the original screens are quite disappointing.

    • http://www.windowsvalley.com Admin

      Did you follow the steps as instructed? What was the size of file?

  • Tom

    Great, Thanks!!!

  • gaurav

    i created the file but then also when i am pasting the inage that i want on the start up screne , it is saying that the folder does not exist …
    pls help ..

    • http://www.windowsvalley.com Author

      Create info & backgrounds folders manually, if they don’t exist.

  • asharib

    hey i cant find the file :
    %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds

    plz help!!!

    • http://www.windowsvalley.com Author

      Go to C:\Windows\System32\oobe and then create info & backgrounds. By default these two folders don’t exist, so create them.

← Older Comments