Customize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows Vista

All of the pictures are stored in a hidden folder buried deep within your program data directory.

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default Pictures.

All you have to do is just remove the pictures you don’t want, and add the pictures you do want. You just need to make sure that your pictures are 128×128 resolution in bitmap format. If you want the pictures to be ordered in a certain way, you can name them in order.

If you’d like to copy your current picture, it is stored in the following file:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\<username>.tmp.bmp

The default user picture (the flower) is stored in the following file:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\user.bmp

Customize the Windows Vista Send To Menu

To get to the SendTo folder, you’ll need to open up an Explorer window, and then paste in the following to the address bar.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

%APPDATA% is an environment variable that actually maps to something like C:\users\<username>\AppData\Roaming.

You should now see a bunch of shortcuts.If you wanted to add an item to the Send To menu to open files in Notepad. You could just drag a shortcut to Notepad into this folder, or create a new shortcut. Now you can see the new Notepad item in the menu

Customize the Manufacturer Support Info in Windows Vista

If you have a computer with pre-installed Windows Vista, most likely you’ll notice the manufacturer’s support information when you look in the system properties window. If you’d like to customize this information or use a picture of your own in this space, you can do so easily.

Right-click on Computer and choose Properties or use the Win+Break key combination to bring up the System properties screen.

To edit the information in this screen, you’ll need to open up your registry editor and navigate down to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation

You can modify the following fields and put any values you’d like into them, with the exception of the Logo key, which you probably shouldn’t change.

• Manufacturer
• SupportHours
• SupportPhone
• SupportURL
• Logo

The last important step is to either create or modify a bitmap file stored at the location specified in the Logo key, usually set to:

C:\Windows\System32\oemlogo.bmp

For best results, you’ll want to use a small logo file, preferably somewhere around 100×100 height/width. Also note that copying the file to that folder will require administrative permissions.