Customize Windows 7 Logon UI Background

One thing that is so special about Windows 7 is that it is more customizable. You can change the look and feel of your Windows 7 according to your liking with just few clicks here and there. This was missing in all the previous versions of Windows. In earlier versions of Windows like XP or Vista, customization was very difficult until unless you take help of some third-party software which will surely put your system files under risk. People tried various hacks to customize their Windows but many times they ended with their system files getting corrupted.

Now with Windows 7 this issue seems to be resolved. You can even change the Logon UI Background in Windows 7 without doing any hacks and without using any third-party application. Just follow these simple steps:-

Enable the customization functionality – Open Windows 7 registry and go to the path:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\
Background. Look for DWORD value “OEMBackground” and change it to 1. 1 is to enable and 0 is to disable. If its not present create a new DWORD value with the same name.

Now look for the folder %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds. This is the path where images are stored. If the folder is not present, create a new one.

Now add images with the following names -

• backgroundDefault.jpg
• 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-)

Few important things to note here is:-

1. Windows automatically detects the background from backgroundDefault.jpg file. If the background is smaller in resolution, it will be stretched to fit your screen and in case it’s too big in size, then the default Windows 7 Logon Background will be loaded.
2. Images must be less than 256kb in size.
3. Images must be jpg format.

[Thanks to Rafael]