Desktop customizations are per-user, and most of the settings are stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Desktop area in the registry. This article explains how to apply the wallpaper and theme settings from your user profile to the Classic logon screen in Windows XP.

(Credits to TweakXP.com)

Customize the desktop theme in your profile

Logon to your user account. Customize the Style, Color and Font size accordingly using the Display Properties, Appearance tab. For more details, see Windows XP: Show your style! Make Windows look the way you want. After customizing the theme in your user account, you need to copy it to the logon screen.

Copying theme settings to the logon desktop

Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe

Navigate to the following key:

This key contains the following values that store theme-specific data:

• ColorName
• DllName
• LastUserLangID
• LMVersion
• LoadedBefore
• SizeName
• ThemeActive
• WCreatedUser

From the File menu, choose Export and save to branch to a REG file (For example, thememgr.reg).

Exit the Registry Editor.

Open the file thememgr.reg using Notepad

Replace the text HKEY_CURRENT_USER with HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

You may do this manually, or by using the Replace command in the Edit menu in Notepad.

Save the file and double-click the REG file to run it. The desktop theme settings from the current user account is applied to the logon screen.

Copying the Wallpaper setting to the logon desktop

See Customize the logon screen wallpaper, screensaver and other settings using Tweak UI

To copy the Wallpaper setting manually, use these steps:

1. Open Regedit.exe and go to the following branch:

2. Double-click the Wallpaper registry value and copy it.

3. Then navigate to the following branch:

4. Double-click the Wallpaper registry value and paste the data that you copied earlier.

Note: If the Wallpaper value is pointing to file within your user profile folder, you may want to copy the image file to a common location, say C:\Windows and then update the Wallpaper path in the above key. This is to prevent any file access/permission issues.

5. Exit the Registry Editor.

Note: The applied desktop settings and styles are visible only if you use Classic Logon (Windows 2000 style) screen in Windows XP.

Fig 2: Classic Logon screen with Zune Theme applied.

SEE ALSO

• Change the Windows Logon Screen Saver in Windows XP
• Change the Windows Logon screen background color in Windows XP

Copyright © 2008 Ramesh Srinivasan. All rights reserved.