warning: read the whole post before taking any actions!
Here is how to change the background:
Download Resource Hacker
Open C:WindowsSystem32imageres.dll with resource hacker
Navigate to “IMAGE” from the left menu and you will see all of the available versions of the logon screen:
5031: 1280x1024
5032: 1280x960
5033: 1024x768
5034: 1600x1200
5035: 1440x900
5036: 1920x1200
5037: 1280x768
5038: 1360x768
5039: 1024x1280
5040: 960x1280
5041: 900x1440
5042: 768x1280
5043: 768x1360
UNfortunately, nothing is that easy 🙂
Looks like M$ disabled the background image completely so changing it isnt going to help.I looked in the registry and usually the syntax for using images from imageres.dll is “imageres.dll,-XX” where XX is the number of the resource that is going to be used.I exported the entire registry database from Vista Ultimate but unfortunately there is no imageres.dll,-503* nor imageres.dll,-504* which means that the background isnt selected from the registry.I tried to replace shell32.dll and few other files directly from vista to 2008, but that doesnt change anything so there must be some other place where these settings are stored.I searched in the group policy editor too, but nothing found again.
The only way to change the login screen i found was to copy tokens.dat from vista to 2008, but that leaves more problems than solves so there must be other way.
Does anyone have any idea where these settings are stored?Apparently changing the tokens.dat have something to do with the whole thing, but im still not sure what..
