How To Remove Windows 7 Logon Screen Branding

[LiquidSolstice]

Well, before anyone shoots me down with "why would you do this" and "omg system tweaker windows 7 works fine leave it alone", this does NOT improve or hurt performance, stability, or security in any way whatsoever. This is purely a visual thing. The reason I went looking for this was because I already know you can use tools to change the logon screen background, but I was attempting to make complete a very subtle and beautiful theme (win7 blend + some very nice subtle icons) and I didn't like the logon branding, because it interrupted my user picture and my logon background's soft colored background.

With this tutorial, which takes all of 2 minutes to do and is entirely safe, you'll go from this:

To this:

1.

In Windows Explorer, go to

C:\Windows\Branding\Basebrd

and take ownership of the

basebrd.dll

file.

2.

If you do not already have

reshacker

or

restorator

installed, then download and install one of them or a program like them.

3.

In Windows Explorer, go to

C:\Windows\Branding\Basebrd

and open the

basebrd.dll

file with reshacker, restorator, or etc, or alternatively, run Reshacker/Restorator as administrator, and from within the app, navigate to

C:\Windows\Branding\Basebrd

and open the

basebrd.dll.

4.

Navigate to the bitmap folder and delete it by right-clicking on it.

NOTE:

The following is done with Restorator Trial, but ResHacker looks and functions identically and is free. You can also edit or replace this BMP file as well

.

5. When you restart the computer next time, the text branding will be gone on the log on screen.

Tutorial Credit: It's from another forum, but Neowin has decided that linking to there is spam, and therefore, I cannot post links to it, and all the images have been rehosted. I'm sorry, I can't even write out the forum's name in plain text without being filtered as spam. If you want the link as proof, just message me. But please note, THIS IS NOT MY WORK. I added a couple words to it but that's it.

I used ResHacker (first time I've ever used it) to do this, and it worked just fine. The login screen doesn't require the bitmap images to function in any way, so this doesn't affect the stability of anything. If you're really crafty, you can change out the BMP with anything you want, but that's too adventurous for me.

Again, I only posted this because I used it for the heck of it and it worked fine. I'm not looking for a tweakers vs. "leave it as it is" debate.