Customize Windows 8 User Account Picture / Lock Screen When Unactivated

I installed Windows 8 early to setup everything up so when it comes out in October I can just buy it and activate it. Then I got tired of not being able to customize anything so I found where Windows stores various images and here they are.

Note: After each one you may have to restart explorer.exe (cmd> tskill explorer)

Tools:Take Ownership registry edit- [URL] ....

User Account Picture:

-Go to C: Drive

-In the ribbon go to "View" Tab and choose "Options"> In the new windows go to "View"> choose to Show Hidden files

-Back in the explorer go to "ProgramData" since it is not hidden anymore

-Then Microsoft> then User Account Pictures

-The images you want to change are user.bmp, user.png, user-40.png, user-200.png (You may not see the .png or .bmp)

Now in Photoshop (or any other image editing software) make 4 images of the image you want using these settings:

user.bmp= .bmp, 480x480
user.png= .png, 480x480
user-40.png- .png, 40x40
user-200.png- .png, 200x200

Here is a pic of mine:

user.jpg

Lock Screen:

This took me a while as it was harder then I thought, but here is a simplified version of what I did.

1. Download and install the takeown script to registry (This will save you a lot of time and trouble)

2. Go to "C:WindowsWebScreen" and replace img100.jpg with the image you want (make sure you have the same name)

3)Go to "C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindows" and right click the "SystemData" folder and choose "Take Ownership" now you can enter the folder by pressing continue

4) Now go to S-1-5-18>ReadOnly>LockScreen_Z and replace the image with the same image you replaced in step 2, but remember to change your images file name to the one of the image your replacing. For example in step 2 it was called "img100" and this one the same image is now called "LockScreen___1920_1080" for me.

5) Now for the last one is in "C:WindowsWinSxS"

6) You will see tons of folders just use the search and search for 'img100" and when you find the correct image open the folder (right click>open file location) and replace img100 with your lockscreen image (once again make sure you keep the same file name so make sure your new lock screen says img100)

It seems like a lot to change the lock screen, but I had to change all of them to change that one setting

Start Screen: [URL] ......

Look at the bottom of this post under, "Programs to do these process for you", if you want a easier way.

1) Hold windows key and press R (win+R)

2) Paste "c:windowssystem32oobemsoobe.exe" -without quotes

3) Wait a second for it to popup and select your color

4) Alt+tab out or just press ctrl+shift+esc to bring up task manager

5) Kill msoobe.exe (it may be under Background Processes)

6) Restart explorer (cmd (or win+r)> tskill explorer)

Programs to do these process for you:I personally prefer to do manual edits, but I know some people do not or have a harder time so here are two programs I found that will change account picture and start screen. Then as a bonus it will also remove the activate water marks.

[URL]

Note: It did change the color (a simple registry edit), but it failed to change the start screen for me.