The heart and sole of your custom login screen is going to lie in your bitmaps. These are the graphics displayed on the Welcome Screen. If you open up a logonui.exe in ResHacker, you will clearly see the bitmaps section.

To begin, we first open up ResHacker, and then open up a login file within ResHacker. Choose a login that has the account list in the same position you want it in your final product, as this will simplify things more than you can imagine at this point. In other words, I do not recommend starting off by opening the original logonui.exe found in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32, although it will not hurt anything and may help you to visualize where exactly the bitmaps and scripts actually end up in the finalized login. If you find this better for learning purposes, be my guest. I, however, am going to open up my login Talisman since it has many of the bitmaps that I want to use already in it and most of the scripts are already modified to my liking. Click on File, then Open and find your login file to begin with.

Once you have chosen a login file, you will see four sections in the left pane and nothing in the right pane. Every login looks like this so get used to it. The four sections are UIFILE, Bitmap, String Tables, and Version Info. Below, you can see a screenshot of what the left hand pane looks like when it is expanded:

 filelayout.jpg ( 25.3k ) Number of downloads: 955


Each entry will break down into another entry (but only one more). This is a basic logonui.exe file.

We are going to do the hardest part first, so that way if something messes up we aren't 3/4 of the way done and can't finish. The hardest part (which really isn't hard at all) is replacing the bitmaps. So, right now we are going to go in and replace the main bitmap which will give us our main framework for the rest of the login.

I started off with this picture right here:

 dream_catcher.jpg ( 242.81k ) Number of downloads: 780


I'm not great with graphics so I got permission from a really good graphics guy over at Cognitivedistortion.com to use some of his wallpapers. This one is called Dream-Catcher. Click on it for a full-size view.


I'd like to point out something before we go any further. You should make your main bitmap the same size as your screen resolution or you may suffer from some massive lag when you mouse over the account list after you add the bitmap. Also, I've found that you need to have the bitmap at 72 DPI or else you usually cannot replace the bitmap (you'll get a screen flash, but still have the original bitmap in the file). To demonstrate what I mean, here is a screenshot of PhotoSuite showing me changing the DPI from 75 to 72 (I already use 1024 X 768 screen resolution, so I did not have to change this). I'm not great with graphics and couldn't tell you what the big fuss is over, but if you try to replace a bitmap and it won't go into the login file, this may be a very good place to start looking for the problem. In any event, here is the screenshot:

 dpiex.jpg ( 15.04k ) Number of downloads: 459


By now, you should have a bitmap ready to use and you should be ready to replace the bitmap currently in the login. Click on the main bitmap (usually Bitmap-->100 but may be Bitmap-->130 if the login you are working on was made using ChameleonXP) and then click on Action-->Replace Bitmap. A second screen will open up. On this screen, choose "Open file with new bitmap.." and find your bitmap. Click ok. Then you should see the current bitmap being used in the top right pane, and your bitmap in the bottom left pane. If this is the case, click Replace. If the bitmap in the top right pane is not the one you want to replace, scroll down the list in the bottom right hand corner until you find the right bitmap. Then click replace. Here are two screenshots to illustrate:

If everything went ok, you should be looking at your bitmap in ResHacker in the right hand pane. If you still see the original bitmap there, it means it wasn't able to replace it with the one you provided. Most often, I find that this is because of the DPI resolution. Go set it 72 and try it again. If you still have trouble getting the bitmap replaced, try another logonui.exe file as this one may have a bad checksum or some other flaw preventing it from working properly (I'm stretching at this point, but if you cannot get the main bitmap replaced, there's no point in continuing further in the tutorial--that main bitmap is the heart of the login).

OK. So now you have the main bitmap replaced. Save your file as something unique (File-->Save as...) with a *.exe extension. You have to add the extension manually in ResHacker so don't just enter KEWLLOGIN; instead enter something like KEWLLOGIN.EXE. Then load up XP LogMod or Logon Loader and apply your new login. After it has been applied, hit the Windows Key + L (the Windows key is that unused key next to ctrl on the left side of the spacebar or next to alt on the right side of the spacebar) to switch user. If you get a 2K Logon Screen (which you shouldn't at this point), the login file is corrupted somehow and you will have to start over (preferable with a different login as your base because it may be the original login that was the problem). However, if everything went the way it was supposed to, you should now see the original login but with your background bitmap displayed.

Congratulations!! That was the biggest and most important step. Now log back in to your desktop and replace the rest of the bitmaps that you wish to replace. Here is a complete list of all the bitmaps:

100---Main Picture or Gradient
102---Password Box
103---Normal Go Button
104---Selected Go Button
105---Normal Help Button
106---Selected Help Button
107---Shut Down Button
108---Normal Undock Button
109---Bottom Scroller Arrow
110---Top Scroller Arrow
111---Main Scrollbar Handle
112---Selected User Frame
113---Normal User Icon Box
114---Default Icon for Administrator
119---Selected User Icon Box
121---Selected Power Button
122---Selected Undock Button
123---XP Logo & Text that appears in the Left Frame normally
124---Vertical Separator for Main Frame (content area)
125---Horizontal Top Separator
126---Horizontal Bottom Separator
127---XP Logo & Text that appears on the Shut Down Screen


Another important point I wish to highlight right now involves saving your work regularly. It is important to save your work after every major change when making a login because it's easy for the file to become unusable. It's hard for me to explain, but after you make enough logins you'll notice that out of the blue, you'll apply your login and you'll get a Win 2K login screen. This means that your file is corrupted and it seems that this can happen for no apparent reason (although more often than not happens when you mess with the UIFILE). If you save your work regularly you can avoid spending hours on a login just to get to the last step and apply it and it doesn't work.

On the same note, my recommendation is this: save your first stage as something unique like "My_Kewl_Login.exe" and it has to have that *.exe extension. When you get to the next stage and are ready to save, do not save over your first login!!! Instead, save the next stage as "My_Kewl_Login1.exe". After you are certain that the second one works, you don't need the first one anymore so the next stage can be saved as "My_Kewl_Login.exe" again. If you go back and forth like this, you'll always have a backup to fall back on so you don't waste a lot of time for nothing. This is very important (trust me, I know firsthand) and this is the only time I am going to say it! Save, save, save. And always have at least one working backup before you save over your work.

Now that I am done ranting and preaching, you should have all of your bitmaps replaced, and your login saved. Go apply your login with your login-swapping program and then switch user to test it. Does everything look ok? If so, go on to the next step; if not, change whatever bitmaps you don't like to something you do like. Oh yeah, and a little tip...if you don't want a bitmap to show up at all (for example, the ? button in the password panel), just use a 1X1 pixel of majenta. In other words, open up MSPaint and create a 1X1 pixel of majenta (magic pink) and save it (making sure there is no white background/border). Then when you go to replace a bitmap, choose that saved 1X1 pixel of majenta. Majenta is transparent in Windows so you will not see this bitmap at all.


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Ok yeah I follows the tutorial and tried it 5 times over to be sure I wasnt screwing it up. I dont think this is a user error, but let me know what ya think. I downloaded a bitmap for use in the logonscreen backround. I opened rehacker and tried to replace. I got an error message. SO after much thought I went into photoshop cs V.8.0 and looked at the image again, yes it was set to 72dpi, and yes it was set to my reolution... so I opened the defalt image to see what it's specs were. They were as follows :size 219pixels X207 Pixels, Resolution 96 dpi. I am not sure what the hell that meant. So I experimented and set my image to the same specs. It worked throguh reshacker, but when I boot up and get my login screen the bitmap is only as big as I set it in photoshop, just 219X207 in the top corner. I also tried just setting the dpi to 96 and keeping the resolution at my screen settings and it still gave me the error message in res hacker. I am deeply troubled by all this plaese help!!!!

If it helps the error message reshacker kept giving me was this.

"Access Violation at Address 00402791 in module 'ResHacker.exe'.Write of address 0185E000"

Well, it sounds like you got past the errors...
The problem is in the UIFILE seciton of the logonui.exe you can control the sizes of the bmps there too. See the UIFILE section of this tutorial (part 3 I believe) for more details of the rcbmp specs.