Learn how to customize Windows 7’s log on background.
Windows 7 is promising a more customizable experience. One of the ways they are making good on that is allowing you to customize the log on background (though they don’t make it easy).
Enable Log On Background Customization
Before you can customize Windows 7’s logon background, you need to enable logon user interface customization.
Warning: Enabling log on background customization requires editing the registry. Edit the registry at your own risk.
You can enable log on background customization by downloading and merging this registry entry. After you’ve downloaded the registry entry, right-click it and select Merge from the options.
Change the Log On Background Image
The log on background must be named backgroundDefault.jpg and be no larger than 256KB.
The background image must be located in %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds. Chances are, the \info\backgrounds folders won’t exist. Simply create them yourself.
After enabling log on user interface customization, place your custom log on background named backgroundDefault.jpg in the %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds folder and then restart or log off your computer to see the new log on background.
Further Customization
The customized log on background image (backgroundDefault.jpg) will be stretched to fill the screen. If you don’t want the background image to be stretched, you can have multiple images that match specific screen sizes by creating files with the names in the list below. The files must be the exact size as the size in their names.
- background768×1280.jpg
- background900×1440.jpg
- background960×1280.jpg
- background1024×1280.jpg
- background1280×1024.jpg
- background1024×768.jpg
- background1280×960.jpg
- background1600×1200.jpg
- background1440×900.jpg
- background1920×1200.jpg
- background1280×768.jpg
- background1360×768.jpg
Credit: Within Windows
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