Personalizing Lock Screen in Windows 7

You have changed the wallpaper and theme of screensaver of your Windows 7 desktop screen and you love the way it looks like, but you hate how the lock screen looks. Don’t be sad because you can change. Check the below steps and personalize your Windows 7 lock screen.

1. Click Start> type ‘regedit’ in the Start Search box. Right-click regedit.exe and select Run as administrator. Enter your admin password when prompted and proceed.

2. In Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> SOFTWARE> Microsoft> Windows> CurrentVersion> Authentication> LogonUI> Background. Before you begin to tweak the Background key, back it up using the built-in Import and Export wizard.

3. When done, click once on Background (if not already clicked). You will see OEMBackground. Double-click the OEMBackground key to bring up the Edit DWORD (-bit) Value window. The –bit represents the 32-bit or 64-bit version of your Windows OS.

4. Change the value to 1 from 0 in the Value data box. While you make this change, make sure that the Hexadecimal radio button is selected. When done, click OK. Close Registry Editor and restart your PC.

5. When done, you will need to make some more changes and select desired wallpaper for your logon screen. Right-click the Start button> click Open Windows Explorer. In Windows Explorer, map read to C: drive> Windows> System32> oobe. Right-click anywhere in the oobe window, click New> Folder.

6. Name this folder as Info. Double-click the Info folder and create another folder by the name Backgrounds. Now that the Backgrounds folder is created, change its permission settings. Otherwise, you will get an error message when trying to save any image in it.

7. Double-click Backgrounds, copy any JPG image in it and rename it as backgroundDefault.jpg. The image shouldn’t be more than 256kb in size and should have the same dimension as Windows 7 PC’s screen resolution. If the picture size doesn’t match the screen resolution, it will either be cropped or expanded to fit the screen.

8. If anytime you want to wind back the changes you made, simply change the JPG file’s name. You can also change the shadow behind the logon button and text to make your lock screen look more appealing and effective. See below to learn how to do it.

9. Open Registry Editor and map read to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> SOFTWARE> Microsoft> Windows> CurrentVersion> Authentication> LogonUI. In the LogonUI key, right-click anywhere and click New> DWORD Value.

10. Right-click the new key and click Rename. Name the key ButtonSet. To change the shadow, double-click the ButtonSet key. You can change the value from 0 (light shadow), 1 (dark shadow), to 2 (no shadow). When done, click OK to exit the window.

11. Exit Registry Editor and restart your PC. When done, lock it and see the magic. Your lock screen will show the image that you selected and in the way you actually changed it to.