Oh yes, I just wrote a post a while ago on “Customize login window background on Snow Leopard“; it is always fun and nice to have some uniqueness than others who are using the same model or OS as you do, for instance,  people mod Windows XP with RocketDock into Leopard-alike interface. Comparing to the previous OS, Windows 7 seems to be quite nice indeed; yet, elegant interface could get you bored too. Now let’s get started and change the Logon background.

This is the default logon background:

And I am going to replace the background with the following image:

Step 1 — Add the DWORD Value into Registry

Note: If your Windows 7 is already OEM version, let’s say, ASUS changed the logon background for you, you could proceed to Step 2 directly.

1. Click Start, then type in “Regedit” and hit ENTER:

2. Navigate to the following root in the registry tree:

KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Authentication \ LogonUI \ Background

3. Right click to create a DWORD value, and name it OEMBackground:

4. Double-click OEMBackground you just created (or Right-Clikc and choose Modify), set the DWORD vaule to 1, and press OK:

5. Exit Registry Editor and proceed to Step 2.

Step 2 — Put your preferable image into the right folder:

There is actually one step in Step 2. Navigate to the following folder:

%windir%\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

(Normally “%windir%” is “C:\Windows“)

Note: If this is your first time creating customized logon background, you will need to create folder “info” and “backgrounds” manually.

And place your own image into this folder, but the file name must be backgroundDefault.jpg.If you want different size of the image to match your screen resolution, here are the sizes that are supported (note that the name must match the resolution too):

• backgroundDefault.jpg
• background768x1280.jpg
• background900x1440.jpg
• background960x1280.jpg
• background1024x1280.jpg
• background1280x1024.jpg
• background1024x768.jpg
• background1280x960.jpg
• background1600x1200.jpg
• background1440x900.jpg
• background1920x1200.jpg
• background1280x768.jpg
• background1360x768.jpg

NOTE: The target image MUST less than 1920×1200 and 256KB. Easy to do with any image resizing tool like Photoshop, .