How to change welcome screen background image?

How can I change the current background image for the welcome screen?

Which requirements exist for this image?

Must it be in *.BMP format or can it *.png or *.jpg as well?

Must it be exactly the site of the screen or is it (if necssary) stretched/shrinked?

Peter

Display Fusion

Hello,
There's a number of ways to do this, manually through the registry or have an application do it for you.
I'd use the one offered by Windows 7 Center, it's very simple. Just make sure you run the exe as an admin. It will automatically resize the image to the required size.
Windows 7 Center Forums

As for the image type, if the image you want to use is the incorrect format, just open it with paint and "Save as" with the proper extension.

Hope this helps

Sadly (and I'd love to be proven wrong) the image must be in jpg format. The worst format for "lossy" images I can think of. However, back to the plot.

You are supposed to have images in all these formats, and with these filenames (I believe) to cover all eventualities if you are sharing, image ratios in (brackets):-

Code:

backgroundDefault.jpg (the actual image you will be using)
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-)

Here's what I do on my own PC.
Get (Hopefully) my required image in either PNG or BMP format, convert it using Photoshop to jpg and select the "maximum" size settings for that format, in other words reduce the compression that knacks up the image as much as possible.
Now, I'm using screen resolution at 1280 x 768 settings, although my monitor is 1280 x 820, it's the closest I can get without excessive oval-ling of round objects. The image I use for my logon screen is 1920 x 1200 in size, its close enough to my aspect ratio to make little or no difference, I don't intend looking at it too long!!, and this should be named BackgroundDefault.jpg. Store this (BackgroundDefault.jpg) in your C:\Windows\System32\oobe\INFO\BACKGROUNDS folder.
Make a .reg file with the following code.

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background]
"OEMBackground"=dword:00000001

Double click the .reg file and accept the warning prompt before merging and the next time you re-boot you should have a new Login/Welcome background.

You can also tie your login background to a specific theme if you change themes a lot but always return to your standard. To do this open your favourite .theme file with a text editor (notepad will do), which, if you've saved your theme, you will find in the folder at C:\Users\Your User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
When you open it up you should see (near the top) something like:-

Code:

[Theme]
; Windows 7 - IDS_THEME_DISPLAYNAME_AERO
DisplayName=Elmers Fav theme

To this, add a line:-
SetLogonBackground=1
So the [Theme] paragraph now reads something like:-

Code:

[Theme]
; Windows 7 - IDS_THEME_DISPLAYNAME_AERO
DisplayName=Elmers Fav Theme
SetLogonBackground=1

Now when you change back to your default, or favourite, theme, you'll get your own personalised login screen, not the Windows Default.

Sorry for the waffle and hope that that is of some use to you.

lol that's great.

Elmer always has some kind or registry trickery.

Thanks for the compliment TG!!

Pstein, one thing to remember, the physical image pixel size is up to you but its physical "weight" must not exceed 256kb. Windows 7 don't like that. Oh no, it don't like it one bit (restores the default login background).