Here is a easy way to change the Windows 7 logon screen without needed to hack any files or use any third party software.

First of all you will need the image that you want to use as the logon screen.  This file should be called backgroundDefault.jpg and be no larger than 256 Kb.  I recommend  resizing it to the default resolution of your monitor.  If you are not sure what this is try 1024 x 768 for 4:3 monitor 1440 x 900 for a 16:9 monitor. Other resolution might work but these two option i know for sure work.  The really important part is that it is smaller than 256Kb.
(How to edit a image is beyond the scope of this article)

Now to make the image appear on the logon screen.

Part one, make a small change to the registry.

1. Click the windows start button and type regedit and press enter
2. (Be careful in regedit as you can mess up your install of windows if you are not careful, Although what we are doing is pretty safe)
3. Inside regedit navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Authentication\ LogonUI\ Background
4. On the right you will see (Default) if you have another entry bellow (Default) called OEMBackground then double click on it and change it’s value to 1 and skip to step 8.
5. If you do not have the OEMBackground entry then do steps 6, 7 and 8.
6. Right click under (Default) in the blank white area and select New DWORD (32-bit) Value
7. Name it OEMBackground and then double click it to change it’s value.  Enter 1 for the value.
8. Close regedit.

Part two, put the image file in the right location on the Hard Drive.

1. Click the Start menu, type Windows and click on Windows Explorer to run it.
2. On the left panel of Windows Explorer click Computer then on the right Double Click Your Local C: drive.
3. Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\oobe
4. Click New folder and call it info
5. Double click on info to enter that folder.
6. Click New Folder again and call this one backgrounds
7.  Copy your backgroundDefault.jpg into the backgrounds directory.
8. This is a protected area of the Hard Drive so you will be prompted to to confirm this. Just click continue.

Done.
Reboot to see your new logon screen with your custom image.

** If it does not work then make sure the image is smaller than 256k and either 1440 x 900 or 1024 x 768. You might have to lower the compression on the JPG to make it small enough.
** If you  need to edit the image you will need to copy it somewhere else first and then edit and copy it back.  This is a protected area of the Hard Disk and directly editing is not allowed.

If you have any problem or have questions please leave a comment bellow.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I just updated to WordPress v3.0.3. Gotta love bug fixes. Still trying to find something interesting to blog about.

Well it has been long overdue for me to add a post. I will be adding some new content here soon but for now I just wanted to say that I have updated to WordPress v3.0.1 and I love it. It has lots of new features and makes writing and maintaining a blog so much easier.

You will be Missed!

I started using Windows 7 a few months back.  One of the first things I noticed is that Windows Explorer no longer automatically expands the Computer Folder view when you click on a favorite in the Navigation Pane.  I found this incredibly annoying as I often copy or move files by dragging them from the right pane to the folders on the Navigation pane.

With the folders not automatically expanding on the Navigation pane I had to manually expand them to do a copy or use copy/paste to do it.  This took much longer and was incredibly annoying.  Today while looking through the Folder Options in Windows Explorer I found the solution.  There are two new options on the General Tab of the Folder Options dialog  box.  They are listed under a section called Navigation pane.  The first option is “Show all folders”, this will show all the folders you are used to seeing in the old Windows explorer.  It will show all the folders on your desktop, your User folder, etc.  The other option (The one I was looking for) is called “Automatically expand to current folder”, this does exactly what it says and is exactly what I was looking for.  Someone at Microsoft had the brilliant idea to disable these options by default.

Personally I have the “Show all folders” disabled and “Automatically expand to current folder” enabled.  I think this give me the best of the old and new versions.  It also allow me to copy and move files without a lot of extra click.  In case anyone does not know, you get to the Folder Options by clicking the Organize Button then click “Folder and search options”.

I just finished downloading and Installing the first Public Beta of Windows 7.  So far I love it.  I installed it first on my main PC.  When I first booted from the DVD the graphical screen came up but just sat there, i thought it must have locked up.  There was no DVD activity, no Hard Disk activity. I thought I would try being patient and it paid off, after about 5-10m I finally got the first screen that asked for information.  After that each screen took about 30s to come up.  But once all the questions were answered (There were not many) the install continued and completed without any problems.

The second install went much smoother.  I installed it on my Toshiba P100 laptop and there were no delays showing the input screens.  It booted from the DVD and asked me the language, etc right away.  I continued the install and it finished in about 15 – 20 minutes.  The only problem I had with this install was that the drivers from my Intergraded Conexant High Definition Audio and my Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Integrated FlashMedia Controller did not get installed.  In both cases I just downloaded the Vista driver from the Toshiba Support site and they worked perfectly.

I like the changes to the new interface.  The new taskbar is nice but I wish it was more obvious which icons represented open programs vs just shortcuts.  Right now it draws a shaded box around the open icons but I don’t think they stand out enough.  Hovering the mouse over the icon to see the running programs in very nice.  You can see a preview of your document without clicking anything.  Although I think the icons are a little too wide and I did not find an option to customize them.

The New HomeGroup feature to setup networking is well done.  Although I found that If I changed the default HomeGroup password that was generated when I created the HomeGroup. I could no longer add any computers to the home group.  I had to delete the HomeGroup and recreate it using the default generated password to add computers.  Hopefully that will be fixed before release.  After that was setup it worked very well.  It is way easier than any other version of windows.

So far I have been unable to use Device Stage very much as the only device I have that it recognizes is my HP printer and it just gives me options to scan, change setting and not much more.  I also can’t access these features over the network.

Performance wise, windows 7 seams to boot faster and be more responsive.  There is still a lot of Hard Drive activity at this point but hopefully that will settle down.

One really nice feature that i absolutely love is the ability to have your background wallpaper automatically change every xx minutes.  I have mine set for 3 minutes and it is great to see the background change as you work.

Over all Windows 7 beta looks good and I think Microsoft is on the right track with this one.  I think it will be a great product when it is finally released.

I have been spending a lot of time recently playing with Joomla v1.5.x.  It took me a little while to wrap my head around how to create a website using it as I come from a background of coding webpages by hand. I have discovered that using a Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla makes the whole process so much easier.  Once you wrap your head around the concept of sections, categories, modules, articles, etc. I discovered that it was quite easy to get a website up and running.  Of course the hard part is finding the right template or coding /  editing one to get the look and functionally you want.  Once this part is done you just need to organize your content into sections then in to categories (sub-section).  Then you just have to write your content into articles and publish them.  Of course you will need to create menus to make your content accessible as well.  Then add these menus to a module to get them appear. There are tons of other things you can do as well with add on extensions that can add everything from a full shopping cart to a simple hits counter and everything in between.  

So far Joomla v1.5 is a great CMS and I will most likely be using it for all my website in the future.  Unless they are a blog in which case I will continue to use WordPress as I am doing with this site.

I purchased the new iPod Touch 2nd Generation today.  It is my first time  owning an iPod and so far I am very impressed.  As far as I can tell it is the same as the iPhone without the Phone and Camera.  I have been trying out lots of the free Apps from the App Store.  There are some good ones and some that are not so useful.  I had to install the new iTunes v8 to use with it.  This is also the first time I have used iTunes.

The iPod Touch 2nd Generation (2G) is different than the 1st Generation iPod Touch in only a few ways.  First the 2G has dedicated Volume Up and Down buttons on the side,  this is very handy as you don’t have to go into the software to change the volume.  The 2G also has a built in speaker so you do not have to use the ear buds.  This is great if you want to use the Alarm clock or don’t feel like using the ear buds.  The battery is also supposed to last longer than the 1st gen as will but I don’t have one to compare it against.  The shape of the Wi-Fi antenna on the back is also different although it is only a cosmetic change.  (It’s oval shaped now)

I have been using the built in Wi-Fi to browse the web and it makes a good portable internet device.  I have also been listening to Audio Books a fair bit.  I had to figure out iTunes to get that to work correctly.  None of my music or Audio Books came from iTunes (They came from CD’s or other online stores).  When I imported all my Audio Books they came in as regular music in MP3 format.  After some poking around in iTunes and searching on the web, I discovered that I could select Audio Book or Speech for the Genre then CTRL-A to select all the tracks.  Then I right-clicked them and selected “Get Info” then clicked on the “Options” tab.  From there I check off “Media Kind” and set it to “Audiobook”, set “Remember Position” to Yes, “Skip when shuffling” to Yes and “Gapless Album” to Yes.  I press OK and after a few seconds the tracks disappeared from my Music list.  To see them again I had to click on the Edit Menu then Preferences and make sure Audio Books was check off.  After Syncing them to my iPod, I could access them by clicking Music then More then Audiobooks.  They played great and could press the Home button to browse the web or play as game as I listened.

So far I love it and have not encountered any problems with it.  

I have updated WordPress again to version 2.6.1.  This time I used a plugin called Automatic WordPress Upgrade.  It worked amazingly well.  It first backed up my files then my database, which it let me download.  Then it automatically downloaded the latest version of WordPress from the wordpress site, put the site into maintenance mode then de-activated all the plugins.  Upgraded the WordPress files, re-activated the plugins and cleaned up after itself.  It was a very smooth and painless process.