Windows 7 logon UI background customization

Interesting! OEMs should sell some of that space to sponsors for an amount, especially on low end hardware.

Paul and Rafael, Absolutely too sweet! I can't wait to check this out. I managed to get my hands on Build 7057 x64 on Saturday. Using Wae's advice to do a clean install versus an upgrade, I managed to install 7057 easily the very first time. From wipe to running the new build, the time elapsed was less than 30 minutes. After doing some quick Windows Updates and a wireless driver re-install, I was back up to running wireless 10 minutes later. Thankfully I backed up all my iTunes media on DVD's (yes more than one.) and the other files on a USB thumb drive. 20 minutes later the machine was up to full capacity. Windows 7057 is definitely starting to show that RC polish. Not quite polished, but the progress is starting to show. The web browser is 3 times more stable. It hasn't crashed on me yet. The rough around the edges parts of the UI are starting to get cleaned up. The only thing that's purely annoying is some of the sound effects. I really do hope they consider using sometthing different, because I found it annoying. A very minor annoyance that I can live with. Other than that, the road to RC is really looking well.

@shark, LOL. Just reading your comments brought a flurry of ideas. Just what we need. Budweiser on your starup screen. Windows 7 and Dell sponsored by Budweiser: The Great American Lager. Imagine if Apple gets into the game. A giant Apple logo on your Windows 7 startup screen. Or if Cannonical buys it for a Ubuntu screen. The options are just hilarious and ridonkulous! @Kentore, Good little blog there. Very cool. Agree with your assessment. However, the latest iTunes update did fix a lot of things. So you owe a partial apology to Apple for some Windows 7 issues.

I followed Rafael's instructions and it worked perfectly. I now have a custom image for my logon screen as well as the screen that displays when you do a Ctl-Alt-Del. My only question is - isn't that screen part of the secure desktop? I wonder whether allowing a custom jpeg to be loaded into memory while in the secure desktop is a possible vector for malicious code. All it takes is a vulnerability in Windows jpeg image parser and a jpeg constructed in such a way that it can exploit that vulnerability. Although, I don't know whether this is really a concern or not. It would take code already running to modify the registry and dump the jpeg into the system32 path. So you're probably already hacked if that happens.

Ugh, I did in an place upgrade from build 7048 to 7057 over the weekend and it has been nothing but trouble. It just blue-screened on me and lots of things are screwed up after it restarted. I'm going to do a clean install now.

"OEMs should sell some of that space to sponsors for an amount, especially on low end hardware." Thank you, but no. One of the ways I like to differentiate from major OEM's is by NOT using the customers computing platform as an advertising platform.

Off-topic: I just got my Sony eBook Reader (just the non-touch PRS-505 model) today that I said I would. I'm letting a few techs here try it out. I loaded up a bunch of OEM System Builder tech docs from Microsoft's site on it because they're used almost day-to-day. Many are over 20 pages in length. Most are in dual XPS or PDF format. XPS isn't supported on the reader, so I downloaded the PDF versions. They have images in them and the images are viewable on the reader, but the text in portrait mode is unreadable at small size. Resizing it by zooming in destroys the text flow because the documents use floating text boxes and charts that don't reformat correctly. Luckily, landscape mode works fine at small (and un-reformatted) mode. The guys seem to like it. If I know they're using it when necessary, I might buy a few more. It makes for a good source of reference, and it's easier than setting up a workstation computer just for reading static documents. Mostly on-topic: The Sony eBook software works on Windows 7. When you plug the device in, it shows up as 3 removeable drives - one for the internal storage, one for the SD slot, and one for the MemoryStick slot. It looks like you can just drop docs into the \database\media\books folder and it'll read them, making the software unnecessary. Nifty! On-topic: I'd hate the think that OEM's have another way to "brand the experience". Everything "OEM" in Windows should be uninstallable anyway. If Microsoft allows customization here, they should also have a new section in the OEM license for bundling stating that every OEM customization beyond the initial Microsoft bits should be uninstallable by the end-user through the "Uninstall a program" link in Control Panel, *including* custom wallpapers, sound sets, icons, etc. Speaking of which, Sony has system units still on the market that have uninstallable software in the config set (mostly components of AOL). Sony isn't the only company like this though. If OEM's are allowed to sell a system without a generic Windows installation disc, Microsoft should require that every "value-added" app or OEM customization be fully (and properly) removeable. That would be at least as close to including an install disc without actually including one.

"Although, I don't know whether this is really a concern or not." It depends entirely on how the image data is processed. If it's some sort of malicious hyperlink or script in the metadata, like how MP3's can have links in ID3 tags exposed by a multimedia player, you can easily omit that option altogether. If it's a buffer overflow causing code execution, which is how most image-related security threats had propogated, those sorts of security threats can be mitigated by DEP, assuming the program has support of it or is protected by it. Most of the security issues relating to GDI image processing has been resolved due to the move to cover most Windows processes with DEP.

WTF is that RDP client that Rafael is using??

Waethorn: Good point about the DEP protection. Like I said, I'm not sure how much of a threat it really is but it's probably worth thinking about - which I'm assuming Microsoft has already done. ;) Rafael said that his RDP client is something he cooked up himself in C#. It's a pretty easy thing to add the RDP ActiveX control to a form, set your own options and wrap a different UI around it. I did the same thing a few years ago but added a tabbed UI because I was working on a project that required me to remote desktop into 9 different machines.

@Kenny: Is it possible to run software DX9 to enable Aero through the RDP client/server interface or is that completely locked out?

With regards to my previous post, yes I got one thing wrong; I said Windows Vista when I meant to say Windows 7. So, Paul predicted that Windows 7 would be out in April 2009. Here is his prediction. See the title of the post? Good. http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/12/05/when-wil... Still think this will be the case? No. As many things on this blog, it will be proven incorrect.

@roberts - the text of the post you link to mentions that he thinks it will be *finalised* in April. Sure, the title and content may not completely match, but at least take him in context correctly. Either way, it looks like his PREDICTION may be incorrect. That's how it works with predictions. Ultimately, they are a guess. Maybe they were on track to finalise in April, but then had to make changes based on Paul's 'feedback' ;-). Ultimately though, roberts you are a blind fool. You're inability to ever see anything good that Microsoft do is staggering. Sure, they are far from perfect, but they are also far from the incompetent can-only-copy-what-everyone-else does company that you imply. Get some perspective!

@Ken: it isn't AFAIR.

@Kenny: Interesting. I tried going from a Windows Server 2008 host to Vista and it didn't work, but the server: a) didn't have DX9 video hardware - it's a true server with an ATI 32MB video or something shatty like that anyway (an Intel Entry Server board for Xeon 3000-series quad-core) b) didn't have the Desktop Experience feature c) running as a local console interface (locally-attached KVM) running as a GUI Hyper-V host for my SBS 2008 VM I would imagine that the omission of Windows Vista Business is just a typo, since I don't see why they would only include Enterprise and Ultimate.

"@roberts - the text of the post you link to mentions that he thinks it will be *finalised* in April." Thus Spake Thurrott: "When will Windows 7 ship? My prediction: April 2009 " See that word? "Ship". That's pretty unambiguous and clear. Besides, WTF does it matter? It's a prediction. Give Paul credit for going out on a limb and having an opinion. That's what he gets paid for. It doesn't matter if he's wrong, because as long as people continue to read him and find him engaging and interesting, he'll keep on writing, and probably get a few of these "predictions" right often enough to keep folks coming back. But it doesn't make a whit of difference. This is all a tempest in a teapot. Discussion closed.

What does it matter what Paul predicted back in December? I remember having a discussion with mikegalos and others about how some people would use that to back up their argument that Windows 7 was delayed, if MS didn't RTM it by April.

No Bobbi Jo....here he is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY - at about the 4:50 mark. --tayme

tayme: I liked this comment on the page: "Last time I checked you needed an IQ of at least 75 to use a mac. Sorry to hear you didn't qualify." So, sorry robertsjoe!

shark, "I remember having a discussion with mikegalos and others about how some people would use that to back up their argument that Windows 7 was delayed, if MS didn't RTM it by April." Isn't it amazing how much easier it is to predict trolls' actions than things that actually matter (like ship dates)?