Windows 7 - Change lock screen / login screen background image and user icon

SECTION A: Change the lock screen/login screen

Part 1: Create folder to hold background image

• Click start and type %windir%\system32\oobe
• In the oobe folder create a folder named info
• In that folder create a folder named backgrounds

Part 2: Create background image

• Open paint (or some similar product) and create or copy in your desired background
• Save your picture as backgroundDefault.jpg
• The picture needs to be under 244kb in size (so you may have to re-open it and reduce its size)
• It must be named exactly as described.

Part 3: Edit registry to apply new background

• Open the regedit
• Browse to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

• Is OEMBackground key in there?
• If not, then you need to create it by right clicking on the background folder and selecting new DWORD name it OEMBackground
• Next double left click on OEMBackground key and change the value from 0 to 1
• Now you should have the following

Your new custom background image should now be applied when you logon or lock the screen.

SECTION B: Change the user icon

The easy way to do this is to click on the start menu and then click on your user icon. From there you can change the image.

Alternatively, you can do it within Windows Explorer should you want all users to have the same image. This is relatively straightforward since it just involves swapping out an image file. The location of the icon for all users is:

C:\User\All Users\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp

Simply create a new icon image, called it user.bmp and save it into the above location.