105 - Newbie Changes Desktop Color Windows 7 Starter Netbook

105 - A Newbie (Noob) Changes the Desktop Color on a Windows 7 Starter Netbook
==== written Sept.25.2011 by JCPMA

Many users of Windows 7 Starter netbooks will have the Windows Classic desktop theme instead of the Windows Basic. The reason is because it makes the netbook less slow. The default background color of this theme is a very lovely calm blue. This color can be easily changed to personal taste by accessing these steps: Go into your Startmenu search field and type "color scheme" > click on the resulting control panel's "Change the color scheme" > click the Advanced button > select Desktop > to the right there is a drop-down panel which lets you choose the new desired color.

I used a black desktop on all my computers, for the longest time, but this default blue on Windows7Starter is very pleasing. The reason I looked into altering this blue is because it intereferes with the Google Chrome Browser's blue. This browser has a similar but not identical shade of blue for its skin. My compromise is to alter the desktop color of the netbook slighty darker to provide enough contrast in order to identify the edges (especially the top edge) of the browser.

What About a Desktop Wallpaper?
Desktop Wallpaper feature has been removed in Windows 7 Starter. However,...
I'm not brave enough to try it, but I found what appears to be a convincing (un-official?) method of implementing a personal wallpaper on this site. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11243/how-to-personalize-windows-7-starter/
A commenter named bOrek on this post, April 12, 2010 3:06 am, contributed this method:
To change wallpaper you can do the following:
1. Open regedit (aka registry editor; you can access it from the star menu by typing “regedit” in the search box…)
2. Go to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\” folder and click on it
3. On the right hand side find there are a bunch of entries. Find the key named “Wallpaper” and double click on it and put the path of the picture you want as your new wallpaper (example path is “C:\Users\Bob\Pictures\new_wallpaper.jpg”)
4. Right-click on the “Desktop” folder in regedit that you found in step 2 and click Permissions.
5. Click “Advanced”
6. Go to “Owner” tab, highlight your name in the box that says ?Change owner to' ( There are only two choices the other is Administrator )… once your user name is highlighted click “OK”
7. Click on “Advanced” again
8. Uncheck the button that reads “Include inheritable permissions from the object's parent”… click “Remove” when prompted
9. Click “Add”
10. Type “Everyone” and click “OK”
11. Check Allow “Read Control” and click “OK”
12. Click “OK” again
13. Highlight “Everyone” and check to Allow “Read” and click “OK”
14. Restart Computer and enjoy new Wallpaper

My 2 cents is that you should consider the screen/wallpaper dimensions for a netbook. I think the default is 1024x600 pixels. This should be ok for most. Sometimes the netbook is run at an artificial (squished) horizon at false dimensions of 1024x768 pixels. I also read somewhere that the background should be a .jpg of less than 256 KB. I don't know if this applies to the wallpaper or if it applies to the logon screen background.

What About a Logon Screen Background?
I have not tried to change it, but perhaps the easiest way to do it is to use the tweaking app Ultimate Windows Tweaker v 2.2 by Ramesh Kumar. In the middle of the page is a button to "set custom background on Welcome Screen". It has a note about a file size less than 256 KB and a resolution of 1024x600.
This website instructs on a registry edit which will allow a change in background.
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/67-windows-7-tips-tricks-and-secrets-643861?artc_pg=2
22. Customise the log-on screen
Changing the Windows log-on screen used to involve some complicated and potentially dangerous hacks, but not any more - Windows 7 makes it easy.
First, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background in REGEDIT, double-click the DWORD key called OEMBackground (not there? Create it) and set its value to 1.

Now find a background image you'd like to use. Make sure it's less than 256KB in size, and matches the aspect ratio of your screen as it'll be stretched to fit.

Next, copy that image into the %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds folder (create the info\backgrounds folders if they don't exist). Rename the image to backgroundDefault.jpg, reboot, and you should now have a custom log-on image.

Alternatively, use a free tweaking tool to handle everything for you. Logon Changer http://tweaks.com/software/tweakslogon displays a preview so you can see how the log-on screen will look without rebooting, while the Logon Screen Rotator http://www.lukepaynesoftware.com/lsr accepts multiple images and will display a different one every time you log on


Future posts
(On a previous post I wrote "A Newbie (Noob) Makes a Password Reset Disk on a Windows 7 Starter Netbook.") My future posts will include the topic Making a Shortcut for Quick Shutdown of a Windows 7 Starter netbook.