This article tells about how you can Customize your login Screen from Changing its background image to Notification Caption and Notification Text. Thanks that Customizing login screen background is an inbuilt functionality of windows 7 so that Original Equipment Manfacturer’s (OEM’s) can create their own custom brandings in the login screen.
Let’s see how can we customize our login screen
Procedure for Customizing Login Screen :
1. Create a folder called “info” in the directory
%windir%system32oobe
2. Create a folder called “backgrounds” in the directory
%windir%system32oobeinfo
3. Chose any JPEG image of your choice that you want to use it as login screen and rename it to “backgroundDefault.jpg” and place it in the backgrounds folder that you have just created.
backgroundDefault.jpg is the default login screen for any monitor resolution and If you wish to have a resolution specific image for login screen following are the naming conventions of the image file in the backgrounds folder.
backgroundDefault.jpg
background768x1280.jpg
background900x1440.jpg
background960x1280.jpg
background1024x768.jpg
background1024x1280.jpg
background1280x768.jpg
background1280x1024.jpg
background1280x960.jpg
background1360x768.jpg
background1440x900.jpg
background1600x1200.jpg
background1920x1200.jpg
4. You are done creating a login screen image with proper name in the proper directory, Now you have to update the registry settings so that instead of default login screen your custom image can be selected as login screen.
5. To change registry settings open up Registry editor by typing “regedit” in the run box and go to the following path by expanding trees respectively.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionAuthenticationLogonUIBackground
or
Just right click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and click on find and enter the key name as “OEMBackground“.
It is a dword string which is defaultly set to ‘0’ , Now Change it to ‘1’ indicating that there is a custom OEM background available to show at login screen.
6. That’s it , Restart your PC for changes to take effect.
Here there are two more tweaks that you can do to your login screen like requiring to enter “Control + Alt + Delete” to proceed to login screen and displaying a custom notification to the user.
Procedure for Requiring Ctrl + Alt + Delete at Login Screen :
1. Open Registry editor by typing “regedit” in the run box.
2. Trace to the following path in registry editor.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon
3.Now “DisableCAD” is the dword key, Which stands for “Disable Ctrl + Alt + Delete” that decides whether Ctrl + Alt + Delete Should Appear or not in the login screen.
Edit the Value to ‘1’ which is the default value for disabling Ctrl + Alt + Delete at login screen and change it to ‘0’ if you want Ctrl + Alt + Delete before proceeding to login screen.
Procedure for adding a custom Notification at login Screen :
1. Open the Registry Editor by typing “regedit” in the run box.
2. Expand the tree untill you reach to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon
3. “LegalNoticeCaption” and “LegalNoticeText” are the two keys that control the logon notifications, Now change these values to your own custom values for displaying your own notifications in the login screen.
Automatic way
If you feel that you couldn’t get the tips mentioned in this article you are always welcome to raise your doubts in the comment section and there is other way to perform these changes its the software way. There is Logon changer Software from TWEAKS.COm Team to change the login screen but there is no software that can help you in adding Login Notification Captions or Notification Text. So, I thought I could write a simple batch file that could perform all the changes for you that are mentioned in this article.
| Download Logon Screen Changer | Software from Tweaks.com |
| Download the batch file | by me which assists you in above mentioned changes of article. |
Make sure to run the batch file as administrator, To Run as administrator all you need to do is right click on the batch file and click on “Run as Administrator” option thats it.
Nice approach