Fortunately, you don’t need to download and install any third-party software to do this. The change just involves a small registry tweak.
Tweaking the Registry
Login to Windows, click Start and enter this:
regedit
Then backup the registry by right-clicking the Computer icon in the upper left pane and choosing Export. If you any problems then you can restore it by importing the saved .REG file you just exported. Make sure you save the file to a removable drive because if you have a hapless encounter with the Registry the last thing you want to do is find the backup.
After you’ve exported the Registry, navigate to this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
In the right pane, you should see two values:
- Default
- OEMBackground
Double-click OEMBackground, change the value to 1 and click OK.
If for some reason you don’t see that OEMBackground key, right click and mouse over to New and left click DWORD (32-bit Value) value depend upon 32-bit and 64-bit OS you have. Name the key OEMBackground, double click it and set the value to 1.
Adding the Image
The first rule is that the image has to be less than 256KB and should match your screen resolution so that the image doesn't look stretched or squished. You can find some decent images by doing a quick Google Images search for windows 7 logon screens gallery.Once you have background image, Open My Computer and click through to this folder:C:\Windows\System32\oobe
In the OOBE folder create a new folder and name it info. Then double-click that and create a new folder inside of info named backgrounds.
Open the backgrounds folder and move your background image into this folder. The file name must be:backgroundDefault.jpg
So make sure you rename accordingly. After you place your image here, lock the screen by pressing the Windows Key + L.You should immediately see your custom image background now.
