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 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.

I took the plunge and upgraded to WordPress v2.5 today.  It only took me about 1/2 hour and it went pretty smooth.  I used the Automatic WordPress Upgraded plugin.  It worked well until it got to the point where it needed to reactivate all the plugins.  It asked me to login again and then asked if I was sure I wanted to do this. I said yes but nothing happened and I had to reactive my plugins manually.  The backend to v2.5 is totally different so it took me a minute to find my way around.  Everything seams to be working.

Now I just have to figure out how to enable the new built in gallery.

I have also decided to try out the “WP Super Cache” plugin instead of my custom WP-Cache plugin. I downloaded the WP-Super-Cache v0.5.4 and made the GoDaddy wordpress fix from site where I found the GoDaddy Fix.  So far I have not been getting any 500 Server Errors.  Let me know if you have a problem with the site and I will switch it back to my Custom WP-Cache plugin.  You can get the WP-Super-Cache Plugin here.

Update: I am currently using v0.9.8 and it works great with no need to edit it.  Just install and activate and it works great.

I just updated the site to use the latest version of WordPress v2.3.2,  I also updated several of the plugins.

Today I had an interesting afternoon thanks to GoDaddy and WordPress. I have been working with my blog a lot over the past few days and I noticed that I was getting a lot of “Error 500 – Internal server error” messages. I was getting this error about 50% of the time. I went to my Control Panel on the GoDaddy site and turned on Error Logging. The only thing the Error Log was showing was a few lines that said ‘mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached. Assuming configuration error. Use ‘RewriteOptions MaxRedirects’ to increase the limit if necessary.’

From this error messages I assumed the problem was being caused by mod_rewrite but after several hours of playing with it and spending 1/2 hour on the phone with GoDaddy Tech Support, I discovered that it was not to culprit.

After doing much searching on the Internet I stumbled upon a forum post talking about the same problem. I discovered that the problem was not with mod_rewrite but was instead with the WP-Cache plugin that I had installed in WordPress. There seams to be some kind of compatibility problem with GoDaddy and WordPress with the WP-Cache plugin enabled. Disabling the plugin got rid of the 500 Internal server error messages.

I did not want to get rid of the WP-Cache plugin because it did speed up my site so I decided to see if anyone had a work around and I found a great blog post that told me how to fix it. The post is at Using WP-Cache on GoDaddy (500 Error).

I found thinkdj’s post over at Blogulate that has a GZIP version of WP-Cache that will work with GZIP enabled so I started with that version and added the GoDaddy fix. I took it a little further and found some optimization for WP-Cache as well. I have it fully working on GoDaddy now with no more 500 Internal Server Error messages. To save you all a lot of work I have created a .zip file containing the fixes and optimization to WP-Cache. Just download wp-cache.zip and unzip it into your wp-content/plugins directory. Your site should be faster and error free. I have only tested it on GoDaddy so I don’t know if it will work on other hosts.

Recommendation:  Remove WP-Cache and Install WP-SuperCache.  It works much better, you don’t need to edit it, it is updated regularly and does not cause any problems with GoDaddy.

Refrences:
Original GoDaddy Fix site
Original GZIP Version of WP-Cache
Original Speed Optimization site