How to customize the logon screen for Windows 7

Windows 7 now supports the ability to change the logon background screen without the use of any third-party software or hacks. The feature seems to have been intended for OEMs to customize. Rafael who is known for releasing the Blue-Badge patch made this great finding. This tweak only works for builds 7057 and up.

Toggling the ability to change the logon background screen can easily be done by changing the value of a specific registry key.

1. Download this file to Enable/Disable custom login backgrounds

If you want to edit the registry key manually, simply open the Start Menu and type regedit in the search bar.

Head to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authenticat\LogonUI\Background

Check to see if a DWORD value named OEMBackground exists and has a value of 1. If not, right click the white-space and create a DWORD Value for this.

2. The images for these custom background are to be placed in the following directory. keep in mind that the file size must remain under 256kb.

%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds

3. This directory may not exist by default, in which case, you would have to navigate to the directory below and create the info and backgrounds folders yourself.

%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds

4. These are the possible file names you can use for your images. backgroundDefault.jpg is loaded and set to stretch-to-fit when a resolution specific background (for example background1280×1024.jpg for my monitor) cannot be found.

• backgroundDefault.jpg
• background768×1280.jpg  (0.6)
• background900×1440.jpg  (0.625)
• background960×1280.jpg  (0.75)
• background1024×1280.jpg (0.8)
• background1280×1024.jpg (1.25)
• background1024×768.jpg  (1.33-)
• background1280×960.jpg  (1.33-)
• background1600×1200.jpg (1.33-)
• background1440×900.jpg  (1.6)
• background1920×1200.jpg (1.6)
• background1280×768.jpg  (1.66-)
• background1360×768.jpg  (1.770833-)

5. To see if changes have taken into effect, you can simply log off then log back in, instead or rebooting your computer each time.

If you are having trouble finding some quality backgrounds of that size, you can check out a few backgrounds our forum members shared.