How to Change Windows Welcome (Login) Screen

Seeing the same old blue screen each time you login to Windows XP can get quite boring for you with passing time. Probably the best way to get rid of this blue screen is to use the direct login feature and not see the welcome screen at all but for multi user computers the welcome screen acts as a login portal and you can not disable it whatsoever. However there is a simple trick to change the welcome screen which I will be teaching you.

You will need a specific version of logonui.exe for whichever version of XP you are using, be it XP, XP SP1 or XP SP2 (Though most SP1 ones should work in SP2). Using a wrong version will cause a lockup buring the boot seqeunce!Check out [http://www.themexp.org/] for many llogonui.exe. Including the Original Ones

Just make sure that you have the "Use welcome screen" option activated in Control Panel --> Users Accounts --> Logon and Logoff Options before trying to apply this trick.

Basically there are two ways to change your login screen. one is to either replace your default login screen with your new one and the other method is to play with the registry such that it recognizes the new login screen as the default one and luckily I am going to teach you how to apply this trick in both ways.

First I will teach you how to over write your existing login screen with your new one. Here are the steps

1. Make a backup copy of C:windowssystem32logonui.exe


2. Rename your new login screen to logonui.exe


3. Overwrite the existing login screen file with your new login screen and thats it you are done.

Second method that I am teaching you will help Windows identify your new login screen as the default one. The good thing about this trick it that you don't have to delete or replace your original login screen file. Here it goes.

1. Copy your custom login screen file under another name, let's say logonuiA.exe, to C:Windowssystem3


2. Open Start menu --> Run --> and type Regedit


3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> SOFTWARE --> Microsoft --> Windows NT -->CurrentVersion --> Winlogon and change the value for UIHost to logonuiX.exe.

• The logonUI is one of the easiest things to modify, REMEMBER Vista LogonUI's are different, use this on XP.