Comments on: Windows 7 Lets You Change the Logon Background Image

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:50:31 +0000

I was able to accomplish this after upgrading to Win7 Ultimate. Now… I was having issues with the tone bar and was installing all kinds of drivers and got frustrated with the operation of MediaSmart and the Tone bar. I reinstalled all of the original software (Vista Ultimate) then upgraded to Win7 Ultimate again… this time the registry value was not in there, so I got brave and backed up the registry. The only string that was there is named (Default). If you right-click on an open space of the screen and select ‘New’ then ‘String Value’ and name it ‘OEMBackground’, then you can set that to 1 and it worked the first time out!

I feel like a hacker!

By: Pedro

Pedro — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:18:35 +0000

wow… I have been able to do this on linux for as long as I can remember… and it’s a whole lot easier than this… more like changing your background image.

By: VectorRoll

VectorRoll — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:55:28 +0000

I am using the 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate build 7100.
I did a few testing with these methods. The only one that worked for me was the Group Policy method.

Note that I checked the regedit to see what it made and it put in the DWORD value (UseOEMBackground) set to value “1″ in this location. (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ System)

You still have to use Step II of this little guide, the part where you make the folders and place the image in there.

What is weird is that the registry location (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ System) was there to begin with and that DWORD value (UseOEMBackground) did not work when manually putting it in there, as I saw someone in Rafael’s Blog mention that DWROD value. I also noticed that this particular location will also disappear from the registry when you turn the Group policy back to being “Not Configured”.

Now the main method for listed where you set the DWORD value (OEMBackground) to “1” enabled in this location (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Authentication \ LogonUI \ Background) did not work at all for me. Taking from what I saw made in the other location while using the Group Policy I decided to add in the DWORD value (UseOEMBackground) into this location. It did not work either. I am not sure if this is because I am using Ultimate or not or if it has to do with being 64bit or not. All I know is that it does not work at all, no matter how I tried it. And I did try many different variations.

On the size and image type, what is strange is that the original background image is a Bitmap at 2.25MB. That size converts to 2305KB. Yet Rafael mentions that it has a limit of 256KB and the guides say that it only mentions the Jpeg format. I find this strange, especially since the original image is larger and a different format to begin with. There has to be a way to change the format and use larger file sizes. This size limitation is depressing.

By: Customising Windows 7 Login Background « the incurable cynic

Customising Windows 7 Login Background « the incurable cynic — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:07:24 +0000

[...] thanks to winhelponline.com for the Group Policy Editor [...]

By: pob

pob — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:02:26 +0000

doesnt work on build 7057