Where Customization Begins 

  • How to configure your Windows logon background in Windows 7

 #26230  by Neuropass
 14 Apr 2013, 20:57
First step: Enable customization of logon background

The first step is to make some changes in the Registry. There is namely a loophole that Microsoft has left open for OEM’s to configure customized logon backgrounds.

-Open RegEdit, by typing regedit in the run window.
-Here it could be a good point to make a Backup of the Registry!
-Start a search, by pressing Ctrl + F:
-Make sure you select only Values
-Type: OEMBackground

You should now have a window infront of you that looks like this:

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Once you get the result, which could take some time. You should see this view, which is under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/:


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If you don’t get a result, just create this key, as you see above: OEMBackground as a DWORD 32-bit in the Background section.

Finally to be able to define a new background you need to set this parameter to One (1 - true).


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Now you are done with enabling setting a customized background, now you need to create the background.

Step 2: Creating the background in the right folder

The folder for the original background image is (on my machine, change to you system folder and look for oobe): c:\Windows\System32\Oobe\

The original image is the background.bmp, which will be used as a fallback image. To get your own image, you have to follow these steps:

-Create a first new folder: c:\windows\system32\oobe\info
-then another one: c:\windows\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds
-In this folder (backgrounds) you create your image
-Not bigger than: 256K
-Has to be: jpg
-Has to be named: backgroundDefault.jpg
-Resolutions as you want, preferrably as your current screen resolution.

There could be a warning message, but then just click “Continue” when you want to copy your newly created image here.

Now you are good to go, restart your computer and you will have a beautiful new logon background.

Step 3: Change shading on button text

If you want to take it one step further you can also change your text shading if it looks strange on your background.

Go back to the regedit and open this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI

Here you should have a DWORD value called, ButtonSet, if not create it.

You can set this to three different values:

0 -- Light shadow
1 -- Dark shadow
2 -- No shadow

Enjoy!
 #26625  by TheAslan
 11 May 2013, 23:38
In order to keep that logon background while changing the visual style you have to modify Group Policy Editor value:

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Computer Configuration > Admisnntrator Templates > System > Logon

Then in right hand side window you have to enabled this value:

Always use custom logon background

Hit Apply and OK, no need for computer restart, I'm not sure if there is a registry editor value for this, I haven't checked that out yet.