If you want to personalize your computer during Windows startup or during its closure, in this guide I will show you how to customize the login and lock screen on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 .
This will give us the opportunity to change the background by choosing from the images provided by the operating system itself, or insert an image at our convenience, to be shown every time the PC is started directly on the login screen.
Customize the login screen on Windows 10 and 8.1
For owners of computers with Windows 10 or 8.1 installed, the procedure is as follows:
Open the Start menu, type ” Settings ” and click on it.
In the window that will open click on ” Personalization “, then on ” Lock screen “.
Here you can choose which image to appear on the lock screen (when you lock your PC) among the wallpapers already present in the system. Otherwise you can alternatively use a solid color or a slideshow of images (you can choose what to display in the drop-down menu under the heading ” Background “).
To add a personalized image, click on ” Browse ” under the ” Choose your image ” section and browse through the folders on your PC until you find the image you are interested in.
If we want to make the image and settings of the start and lock screen the same, activate the item ” Show the background image of the lock screen on the login screen “.
In order to make these changes make sure that Windows 10 is activated regularly under license, otherwise it will not be possible to customize it.
How to change the login and lock screen on Windows 7
If you want to change the background of the login and lock screen on a PC with Windows 7 operating system ( this method however also works on Windows 8.1 and 10 ), you can use a program such as Logon Changer, very simple to use and available for download from the following link :
DOWNLOAD | Logon Changer
SITE | Logon Changer
Download and install the program (additional installation of the .NET Framework 3.5 may be required during installation .
Once the installation is complete, start the program. An interface will appear with your current login background and a series of buttons, which perform the following functions:
- “Change Logon Screen”, with which to set a new image on the login and unlock screen;
- “Test”, button that takes you back to the operating system login, to see what the changed image looks like;
- ” Revert to Default Logon Screen “, to reset the original image to default.
To change your background image on the login screen, click on “ Change Logon Screen “. If the image is too large by Windows standards, a copy of the image will be created automatically and adapted to the right resolution of the PC (however, I recommend obtaining photos with a high resolution, so as to have the highest quality).
Once the image has been correctly applied, a confirmation message will appear with ” New Logon Background Successfully Installed ” on it.
2nd Method
For those who are more familiar with the computer and want to change the windows startup screen without using third-party software, you can follow this procedure.
The phases of which it is composed are two, one that foresees the modification of a value of the windows registry and the second the loading of an image in a specific folder.
Step 1: Change value in the Windows registry
First, we need to edit a single Windows registry value by starting the Registry Editor. To do this, press ” Start “, type ” regedit ” and then press Enter. In the Registry Editor, access the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
In the right pane, you will find the item ” OEMBackground “. If it is not present, you can create it by right-clicking, ” New ” and then ” DWORD value (32 bit) ” and then naming the new ” OEMBackground ” value .
Back to us, on the ” OEMBackground ” value , set the value to ” 1 ” in the ” Value data ” box , then click ” OK “.
Note: if a new theme is selected in the “ Appearance and Personalization “window, the value of the newly modified key will return to 0 and therefore you will have to perform this registry change again.
Step 2: Loading the background image
In order to be optimal, the image to be loaded as background must respect 2 rules:
- Having a size smaller than 256 KB, so it may be necessary to compress the image in JPG format.
- Use an image that has the same resolution as your monitor so that it is not stretched or distorted.
Windows looks for the background image in a specific folder:
C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds
If this does not exist, you will have to create these folders and load them into the image, being careful to rename it “backgroundDefault.jpg”.
You won’t have to do anything else. Now, every time you turn the computer on or off, the image you set will appear as a lock screen.