Changing the Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 Login Background

[buzzy]

I have no idea where my entry for July 29 went, so I'm putting this entry here. I only vaguely remember what it was supposed to be about, so I'm posting this entry I was saving for when I was too lazy to write something.

I don't know how I missed this one, but I recently changed the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 login background on two computers, a notebook (1366x768 resolution) and a desktop (1280x1024 resolution). Changing that background luckily doesn't require any third-party software replete with viruses and adware. Here's a step-by-step guide. This is what worked for me, but don't blame me if you bork your computer.

1. First, figure out what your resolution is. If you don't know, click Start and type "resolution". Then click on "Adjust your screen resolution". In the window that appears, look for what it says under resolution, which should be a number, an X, and another number. For example, on my laptop it says "1366 × 768 (recommended)". The first number is the width, and the second number is the height. Remember it and close that window.
2. Open your favourite graphics editor and make a new file with the width and height of your resolution. Alternately, you can find a picture you particularly like somewhere on the Internet and use that instead. If you do that, make sure the width and height are at least close to the size of your screen or you could wind up with a blurry and/or squashed image. Just be sure not to put anything you don't mind getting blocked in the centre (where the log in details go) or at the bottom left (accessibility button), centre (the version and edition of Windows you're using), or right (the shut down button when no one's logged in). If you have to push Ctrl+Alt+Delete to log in, you also have to clear some space for the "Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to log on" message. Once you have a pretty good idea of whether your picture will work, save it as "backgroundDefault.jpg". The maximum size for it is 256000 bytes (or what Windows Explorer calls 250 KB). I've seen varying maximum sizes on the Internet, so it may be slightly less. For me, a quality of 60% was about the best I could get for the size, but if you have a larger screen and graphic, you'll have to reduce the quality.
   • If you want to use the default login background as a starting point, it's hiding in the imageres.dll in the %windir%\system32 folder (e.g., C:\Windows\System32), but you'll need a resource editor to pull it out. (A free editor, like XN Resource Editor will suffice.) Just look for the login bitmap in the IMAGE section. 5031 to 5043 are the Windows 7 logon screens at different resolutions and 5044 to 5056 are the Windows Server 2008 R2 logon screens. If you want something pretty close without using a resource editor, go to your image editor's open file window, browse to your Windows folder (usually "C:\Windows"), then go to System32, oobe, and open background.bmp.
   • Some images that come with Windows are hiding in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper and under various folders in C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT. They're all JPG files already, but you'll have to get them below the 250 KB size limit.
   • You can look for images on an image search engine, such as Google Images, but you may have to adjust them in your image editor.
3. Click start and type "%windir%\system32\oobe" in the search box and hit enter. If you don't see a folder called "info" in there, create it. Go into the "info" folder and look for a "backgrounds" folder. If you don't see it, create it. Then move (or copy if you prefer) your "backgroundDefault.jpg" file in there.
4. Now here comes the tricky part. Windows stores a lot of settings in the Registry, and we have to change one such setting to let it see our graphic. There are two methods for doing this:
   • Automatic method: Download and run this file. Since a lot of people don't trust REG files from the Internet, I've provided a manual method.
   • Manual method: Click Start, then type "regedit" in the search box and hit enter. If you get a prompt, click Yes.
     • If you don't know how to use the registry editor, double-click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SOFTWARE. Scroll if necessary to find Microsoft and double-click it. Continue scrolling and double-clicking Windows, CurrentVersion, Authentication, and LogonUI. Look for Background and click it. (If you can't see it, right-click an empty space on the right side, click New, and then Key. You'll see a new folder, which you can give a name. Call it Background.) Now look for something on the right side that says "OEMBackground". (If you can't see it, right-click an empty space on the right side, click New, and then "DWORD 32-bit Value". When it lets you name it, type "OEMBackground" [without the quotes] and hit enter.) Double-click OEMBackground, type 1 in the box that appears (your cursor will be where you need it to be), and hit enter.
     • If you do know, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI. Look for the Background key; if it's not there, create it. If there's a DWORD value called OEMBackground, set it to 1; if not, create it.
     Close the Registry Editor.
5. Now, click Start, then go to the little arrow next to Shut Down, and click Lock. Alternatively, you can just hit the Windows key+L. If your picture appears, congratulations, you have a new login graphic. If it appears and something's wrong, you can log back in, adjust your graphic and overwrite the "%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds\backgroundDefault.jpg" file you saved earlier. You can keep saving over it and locking your computer to double-check. (I had to do this several times to make sure that the good parts of my background weren't blocked.) If nothing shows up, try restarting. If you still don't see your new background after restarting, you either didn't do the "regedit" part above quite right or your file is too large.
6. Optional 1: You can make several backgrounds with different resolutions, though the only case I can think of for this is if you're setting up a master system that will be imaged and there are all kinds of monitors it'll have to support. The files go into the same spot as "backgroundDefault.jpg" and are called "background(width)x(height).jpg", where (width) is replaced with the width of the image and (height) is replaced with the height of the image. Note that it'll first look for a background that matches your screen resolution, then it'll look for one that matches your aspect ratio (or ratio of your width to your height), and then it'll look for backgroundDefault.jpg. Here are the files it will look for (and their aspect ratios):
   • background768x1280.jpg (for a 768x1280 resolution or a 3:5 aspect ratio)
   • background900x1440.jpg (for a 900x1440 resolution or a 5:8 aspect ratio)
   • background960x1280.jpg (for a 960x1280 resolution or a 3:4 aspect ratio)
   • background1024x1280.jpg (for a 1024x1280 resolution or a 4:5 aspect ratio)
   • background1280x1024.jpg (for a 1280x1024 resolution or a 5:4 aspect ratio)
   • background1024x768.jpg (for a 1024x768 resolution or a 4:3 aspect ratio; it will probably scale this down for an 800x600 or 640x480 resolution)
   • background1280x960.jpg (for a 1280x860 resolution or a 4:3 aspect ratio; it will probably scale this down for a 1152x864 resolution)
   • background1600x1200.jpg (for a 1600x1200 resolution or a 4:3 aspect ratio; it will probably scale this down for a 1400x1050 resolution)
   • background1440x900.jpg (for a 1440x900 resolution or a 8:5 aspect ratio)
   • background1920x1200.jpg (for a 1920x1200 resolution or a 8:5 aspect ratio)
   • background1280x768.jpg (for a 1280x768 resolution or a 5:3 aspect ratio)
   • background1360x768.jpg (for a 1360x768 resolution or a roughly 16:9 aspect ratio)
   Oddly enough, there are no exactly 16:9 resolutions there, like 1920x1080 (1080p) or 1280x720 (720p). I tried naming a background with my resolution (not listed above) and it didn't work, so these must be a hard-coded set of resolutions.
7. Optional 2: You could enable the Ctrl+Alt+Delete requirement on versions of Windows 7 that don't require it for extra security.

After doing this (steps 1-5 above) on my Windows 7 Ultimate laptop, I repeated it on my dual-boot Windows 7 Home Premium/Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise desktop. It worked in all cases. Since the desktop and laptop have different resolutions and aspect ratios, I had to make one graphic for each. Then I decided to make my Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 installations on the desktop each have different (but similar) graphics. I won't show what graphics I made, as people who don't know me would be like "WTF?" and people who do know me would roll their eyes.