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By cpremo
How to Change Windows 7 Logon Screen Background
This Document will show you how to set a Windows 7 PCs initial Login screen so it will display your Corporate Login image. These
settings will ensure that user changes to the Windows environment wont change your Login Screen.
Figure 1 shows a normal Windows 7 login screen background. The Windows users can easily change the User Icon image via the
user interface for changing the logon screen user icon. However, Windows 7 doesnt have a built-in Logon changer for customizing and
changing logon background.
Figure 1
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The Windows 7 logon background image is in the Windows System32\OOBE file folder
C:\Windows\System32\oobe\\
called background.bmp (1024 x 768 pixels in size). You cannot change the logon screen image
by just renaming the default background wallpaper and copying a new background image into the
oobe folder. If you try to rename the default login screen image background.bmp, you receive an error message (Figure 2).
Figure 2
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The following instructions give you a work-around that will allow you to change the Windows 7
logon background.
1. From the Windows 7 start menu search text field enter regedit (Figure 3) and press Enter to
open the Windows 7 Registry Editor.
Figure 3
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The User Account Control (UAC) prompts for permission (Figure 4) to execute the Registry
Editor program. Click on the Yes button to allow the Windows Registry tool to open.
Figure 4
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2. Path to following the Windows 7 registry location.
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
If an OEMBackground DWORD entry already exists (Figure 5), set the value of OEMBackground to 1. If not, Right-Click on the
Background folder and select new DWORD. Set the name to OEMBackground and its value to 1 as shown in the below
screenshot. After changing the OEMBackground setting, you can close the Windows 7 registry tool.
Figure 5
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3. You now need to create two folders to store the background image you will use to set Logon
background for Windows 7.
a. Info folder. Open the C:\Windows\System32\Oobe folder and create a new file folder
named Info (Figure 6).
NOTE: You need to confirm this operation by selecting Continue button (Figure 7).
Figure 7
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b. backgrounds folder. Now create a folder called backgrounds inside the Info folder.
NOTE: You need to confirm this operation by selecting Continue button (Figure 7).
4. Copy the image you want to use as the logon background to the
C:\Windows\System32\Oobe \Info\Backgrounds folder and rename it as
backgrounddefault.jpg. NOTE: You need to confirm this operation by selecting Continue
button (Figure 8).
Figure 8
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5. From the Windows 7 start menu search text field enter GRPEDIT.MSC (Figure 9) and press
Enter to open the Windows 7 Local Group Policy Editor. Path to the Always use custom
logon background setting option and change it to Enabled (Figure 9). This setting will make
it impossible for a user to reset the logon background when they change their Appearance
and Personalization settings.
Figure 9
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6. For Novell Client users, the Novell Client 2 SP1 for Windows 7 client doesnt allow you to
set the UserName logon name. Even if you add it to using the Registry editor (Figure 10),
when you reboot the PC it wont show unless you make the following change.
Figure 10
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Open the Windows 7 Local Group Policy Editor, by typing GRPEDIT.MSC in the search field
and press enter. Edit the Windows Settings Security Settings Local Policies Security
Options Interactive logon: Do not display last user name setting to Disabled (Figure 11).
Figure 11
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After completing all above steps, you Logon graphic should hold to this new setting. Test your
configuration by changing an Administrators Personalize settings. Also create a user account
and change the users account Personalize settings.
Figure 12
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