As a follow up on my earlier post Windows 8 – Script for customizing WinPE 4.0 – Part 1 I want to share with you how to customize the WinPE wallpaper. Credits go to blog reader “Max” who responded on a question from reader Carl H.
In WinPE 4.0 the wallpaper is not called winpe.bmp as in previous versions of WinPE but winpe.jpg. Also the winpe.jpg has special permissions so overwriting the file would require changing them. An easier approach is to add your custom WinPE wallpaper file to the WinPE sources and change the appropriate registry value in WinPE.
In the below example the WinPE sources are mounted into the local folder C:\mype64\mount and we have copied our custom wallpaper called winpecust.jpg into the \system32\ folder of WinPE.
We then run the below 3 command lines to mount the default user registry hive, edit the wallpaper registry value and then unmount the hive.
REG LOAD "HKLM\Winpe" "c:\mypex64\mount\Windows\system32\config\default"
REG ADD "HKLM\winpe\Control Panel\Desktop" /v "Wallpaper" /d "%%systemroot%%\system32\winpecust.jpg" /t "REG_SZ" /F
REG UNLOAD "HKLM\Winpe"
And as you can see from the below screen shot, WinPE has now a custom wallpaper set.
Is there a size limit to the .jpg file?
convert image in bmp format 24 bit and 1024×768.Mount the wim file and find setup.bmp,background.bmp,winpe.bmp replace your image with same name.you are done no reg edit needed,.Dnt forget say thx.
Thanks for the tip. Is it possible to place shortcuts on the WinPE 4.0 desktop? I’ve tried placing files under \users\default\desktop and users\public\desktop but neither display on the desktop. I’m a WinPE noob – perhaps desktop interaction features are disabled by design.
nope, since there is no desktop (explorer) instance running in WinPE, if you want some sort of shortcuts, you would need to launch a custom shell.
Thanks Alex,
Yours was the only one that worked.
The comments from Shahzaib do not work.