How to Customize Windows 7 Login Screen without Using 3rd Party Software

Did you know Windows 7 comes with a built-in Registry tweak which allows you to easily customize or change the background image of Windows login screen . Yes

, using this secret feature you can set any of your favorite wallpaper as Windows 7 login screen background without using any 3rd party software.

Want to know how to do that? Just follow these simple steps:

1. Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It'll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

3. Now in right-side pane, change value of OEMBackground to 1

PS: You can use following ready-made registry script to enable custom login backgrounds, no need to manually apply the tweak using 1-3 steps:

Download Registry Script

NOTE: If you don't want to use the above mentioned Registry tweak, you can edit your current theme file present in "%windir%\Resources\Themes\" folder using Notepad and set the entrySetLogonBackground to 1 in [Theme] section. If you are using default Aero theme, you'll need to edit aero.theme file in Notepad. 

4. Now go to following folder:

%windir%\System32\oobe

Here %windir% represents "Windows" folder present in the system drive where Windows 7 is installed.

5. Create a new folder "info" inside oobe folder. Then again create a new folder "backgrounds" inside info folder. So the final path would be:

%windir%\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

6. Now copy any desired wallpaper to this new "backgrounds" folder but following conditions must be followed:

• The image name must be backgroundDefault
• The image format must be JPG
• The image size must be less than 256 KB
• 

7. That's it. Once you copy the wallpaper to "backgrounds" folder, your Windows 7 login screen will start using this new wallpaper as background. You can check the new login screen background by logging off or locking Windows.

PS: You can also use custom sized images based upon your screen resolution with the following names:

• backgroundDefault.jpg
• background768x1280.jpg (0.6)
• background900x1440.jpg (0.625)
• background960x1280.jpg (0.75)
• background1024x1280.jpg (0.8)
• background1280x1024.jpg (1.25)
• background1024x768.jpg (1.33-)
• background1280x960.jpg (1.33-)
• background1600x1200.jpg (1.33-)
• background1440x900.jpg (1.6)
• background1920x1200.jpg (1.6)
• background1280x768.jpg (1.66-)
• background1360x768.jpg (1.770833-)

NOTE: The backgroundDefault.jpg image is loaded and stretched-to-fit when a resolution/ratio-specific background cannot be found. If the background cannot be loaded (e.g. image physically too large, incorrect ratio, etc.), the default image is loaded from imagesres.dllfile.