How can we change our login screen?

Today I’m going to tell you all about a simple but neat trick. This is not a hard thing to do, and not risky at all, if you do exactly as I say. =)

Here I’m going to teach you how to change your login screen. It’s going to be simple 4 step process. Follow me on this.

STEP1: Locate the folder

First thing you have to do is to locate the folder where the login screen images are stored.

They’re located in your Windows directory.

Go to the default directory:

C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\Backgrounds

Or you can get there easily by pressing, Win key + R and then pasting this in the run.

%windir%\System32\oobe\info\Backgrounds

It will direct you to the folder where the default images are stored. If the folders don't exist, don't worry. Create the folders in the exact path mentioned above.

Now you’ve successfully located the images folder, lets move on to the next step.

STEP2: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

The most important rule in the world of computing. Backup everything! Simply copy all the images in the folder located previously(Backgrounds folder) and back them up in some safe place. [keep it guarded 24x7 if you can ;)]

After backing them up, delete all the images in that folder and empty it.

STEP3: Find the image you desire, copy it here

The next step is finding the image that you want to be your new login screen. It can vary from a LOLCAT to your girlfriend's photograph, totally up to you to select the image. Keep only one thing in mind, don’t find a huge image.(about 250KB max)

Once you found a suitable image rename it to BackgroundDefault. Copy that selected and renamed image to the (now empty) Backgrounds folder which was located in the STEP1. The folder should look like this when you are done with this step.

STEP4: Update the registry

Here comes the final step, and perhaps the most important of them all – updating the registry. First you should open your windows registry editor. To do this, simply open run command window (Win key + R) and type,

regedit

You should have the administrator privileges to do this. When you open the registry editor you have to locate the registry key. To do this press Ctrl + F and find this,

OEMBackground  

That is the easiest way to do it. Don’t worry if it took some time.

Double click on the OEMBackground entry and change the Value data to 1. Press OK and close the registry editor. Then you are done for good.

You can download the image i used via this link. This is how it looks in the end.

Hope you guys enjoyed this. See you all soon with another post. Cheers!

P.S.:-
There are also software that can do this for you. If you prefer that you can find more details from here.