Change the Welcome Screen Wallpaper !!!

Change the Welcome Screen Wallpaper
[Vista tips]
* There are many third-party programs, such as those from Stardock (WinCustomize) which can change your welcome screen wallpaper. Some people, like me, prefer not to install additional software. Perhaps you are concerned about boot time, or perhaps you just don't want a bunch of "junk" on your HDD. Don't misinterpret "junk"; I actually use some Stardock software myself, and it has been found to be spyware and adware free. So, unless you are not using a password, or have used the auto-logon tweak I posted several sections back, you may want to do this manually. Earlier versions of Windows, such as XP, made this easy. With Vista, however, it requires a little more than just a registry hack. First, you need to go to your system32 folder; I assume that everyone already knows where that is. Right click the imageres.dll file, and select "properties". Now, under the "security" tab, click on "advanced" > "owner" > "edit". Select "administrators", and click OK in each of the windows (there should be four). Now, right click the imageres.dll file again, go to properties > security > edit. Choose administrators in the list, and check "allow" for "full control", then click ok. If you still have UAC (user account control), respond positively to all the annoying prompts. Now you have taken ownership of this file; keep in mind that this is how you can "take ownership" of any other files, except certain special .cpl, .dll, and .iso files. Moving on, we need to make two copies of imageres.dll directly in C:\Windows\System32: name one imageres-new.dll and the other one imageres-old.dll. You need an editor to create the image you want to use. If you don't know, you don't have one; you can get XN Resource Editor for free here. We will base the rest as if everyone is using the same editor, XN Resource Editor, from that hyperlink. It is what I used, and it worked great! First, open the program. Select view/options, and choose "XN Resource Editor internal resource parser" from the drop menu under "choose which parser to use". Click ok, then go to file > open > C:\windows\system32\imageres-new.dll. Now, from the left "tree", expand "IMAGE" and open anyone of the numbered folders. Inside each of these folders is an entry which represents a different resolution of the stock welcome screen wallpaper, and you need to choose the one which matches your PC's current resolution. Unfortunately, you will need to redo this step if you switch monitors, such as if you have a laptop that you hook up to your monitor. If you don't know your current resolution, shame on you... find it in control panel > display settings. You can modify/edit the stock photo, but you will probably want to use your own. In order for this to work, you must first make it the same pixel*pixel size as the one it is replacing, which can be figured out by right clicking the image and selecting properties; use any image editor to resize it. If it is too small, use black space. Now, CTRL + C to copy the image, while you have selected the image you are going to use, and CTRL + V to paste it over the current (stock) image in the XN editor. Save the file over the existing one (imageres-new.dll), and close XN. Finally, we need to replace the original imageres.dll file with this new one, which stumped me for a while. Restart your PC, and just before you get to the boot screen start tapping F8 to bring up the "advanced boot options" menu. Select "safe mode with command prompt", and when the CMD prompt loads, switch over to your system32 directory by executing:

CD C:\Windows\system32

Now, enter this command:

copy imageres-new.dll imageres.dll

Note the space between copy and imageres-new.dll, and between ...-new.dll and imageres.dll. You will be asked if this is what you want to to do. Enter y (for yes), type exit and press enter; press CTRL + ALT + DEL, and use the red button on the bottom right to select "restart". You may need to redo this to tweak the appearance if the image is distorted or the aspect ratio was not properly copied over. It took me two tries to get it the first time, but only one each time after. That's it :)