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Did you get bored already of your old Windows logon screen? If you’re reading this, you were probably unaware of the fact you can actually tweak the screen to your liking, and include any picture you wish, including a picture of your boss wearing a tutu and spinning like a ballerina. That would make anyone’s day.

Here’s a simple tutorial that will allow you to switch the logon screen background to anything you’d like. I’d rate the difficulty at 4/10 (not for novices, but good for someone aware of what the Windows registry does). Just be aware that most Windows 7 tweaking, or any tweaking on Windows for that matter, requires the modification or addition of certain values in the registry. If you want to learn how to work with your registry, read The Tech Guy’s official registry tutorial before proceeding. Otherwise, enjoy the following tutorial and don’t forget to get your hands on a picture of your boss in a tutu.

First, get into your registry editor. If you don’t know how to do this, please read the registry tutorial, or else I’m going to have to hit you with a baseball bat. Once you’ve done that, get into this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background.

Modify the value named “OEMBackground” to 1. This tells the computer that the background lies within a particular folder, namely the “Windows\System32\oobe” directory. Feel free to navigate to it, as this is the next step. While inside that folder, create a new sub-folder called “info.” Inside “info,” create another sub-folder named “background.” This is where you will put your background image.

Your background image for the logon screen should be a JPEG file, with the file extension “jpg,” and below 256 KB in size. Rename it to “backgroundDefault.jpg” and move it to the folder you just created (the “background” folder). If you want to modify the background for a particular resolution, just place another copy of the image into the folder, and rename it to “background,” followed by the resolution, delimited by an “x.” Here’s an example: background1920x1080.jpg. This is neat for compatibility with both 4:3 and 16:9 resolutions on your monitor.

When you finish this, you only need to restart the computer. Enjoy your new logon screen! Click the thumbnails below to see some cool 1080p logon screen templates in full size!

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1. A Brief, But Comprehensive, Windows Registry Tutorial