How do I change the ISO default wallpaper?

PerhapsAverage

PerhapsAverage

New Member
I am using NTLite for the first time, with a windows 10 LTSC 21H2 ISO. I have been working on it for around 20 or so minutes. But I can not find out where to change the default wallpaper.
 
PerhapsAverage said:
I am using NTLite for the first time, with a windows 10 LTSC 21H2 ISO. I have been working on it for around 20 or so minutes. But I can not find out where to change the default wallpaper.
Click to expand...

Ahem .... have you tried looking in the 'Guides ' section ?

Wallpaper Locations, Resolutions, and bit depths

Windows 10 and 11's default desktop wallpapers are stored in C:\Windows\Web. This folder usually contains subfolders named after different wallpaper themes (such as “Flowers” or “Windows”) or resolutions (“4K”). You can find the default Windows 10 and 11's wallpaper, which is the one with the...
www.ntlite.com www.ntlite.com
 
The Aero theme gets installed on user-creation and overwrites any changes you've made to the personalizations that themes handle, such as wallpaper. To fix this, prevent the Aero theme from being installed with the following keys:
; Start > Settings > Personalization > Themes > Custom
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

; Start > Settings > Personalization > Themes > Custom
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

If you want a picture as your wallpaper, add these keys, and modify the path to point to your wallpaper:
; Start > Settings > Personalization > Background > Background > Picture
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"WallPaper"="C:\\Windows\\Web\\Custom\\Wallpaper.png"

; Start > Settings > Personalization > Background > Background > Picture
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wallpapers]
"BackgroundType"=dword:00000000

If you want a solid color as your wallpaper, add these keys:
; Start > Settings > Personalization > Background > Background > Solid color
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"WallPaper"=""

; Start > Settings > Personalization > Background > Background > Solid color
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wallpapers]
"BackgroundType"=dword:00000001

; Start > Settings > Personalization > Background > Choose your background color > Black
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="0 0 0"

I would also only use a wallpaper that is the exact resolution of your monitor. In addition to that, if you are using a JPG file then Windows will compress it substantially, resulting in a huge loss of image quality, so I added a tweak for that too:
; Hidden > Wallpaper > Image compression > Off
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"JPEGImportQuality"=dword:00000064

A program like GIMP is great for editing wallpapers to resize/crop them. Integrate the keys you need into your image and they will work for all users.
 
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X: is the temporary drive letter for WinPE when it boots off the USB. It doesn't exist on a finished system.
 
There's a ton of ways to go about this. One method is that you can take the pre-made Windows wallpapers that Taosd listed out and change the wallpaper registry filepath to point to one of those.

If you want to use your own custom picture then you can mount Windows in NTLite and paste your custom wallpaper into the WIM and then change the registry filepath to point to that, which is how the registry key I posted is currently setup. The benefit to this approach is there's no need for scripts/tools for permissions and no interference with SFC either. Here's those steps in detail:
1) Run NTLite as an administrator. Once it is loaded, go to "Image" at the top, click "Add" then select "Image directory" and point to the Windows image folder you want to modify. Right-click on the Windows image and select "Load" and wait until it is finished. Right-click on the image again and now select "Explore mount directory" which lets you browse the files inside.

2) Inside the mounted directory, go into the "Windows" folder, then the "Web" folder, and now right-click and create a new folder (you should also see folders for 4K, Screen, and Wallpaper here). Name the new folder Custom with a capital "C" and then open it and paste your custom picture inside, and be sure to name this picture as Wallpaper with a capital "W". If your picture is not already in .png format you will either need to convert it, or edit the relevant registry key so that the 2 instances of "Wallpaper.png" now appear as "Wallpaper.jpg" or whichever format your picture is in.

3) At this point you would add your .reg file to integrate the personalization registry keys previously discussed. After you finish with the mounted directory, exit out of that window and go back into the NTLite program. On the left menu, select "Registry" and then click "Add" from the menu at the top, choose "Registry files" and point it to your registry file.

4) To finalize the changes, click "Apply" from the menu on the left, then click "Process" and wait for it to finish. Exit out of NTLite, then copy all the files inside the edited Windows image folder to a formatted USB (NTFS or exFat), then boot to that USB to install your modified Windows.

The wallpaper filepath in the registry key should always be C: drive unless you are manually changing your Windows drives or have some other niche configuration which affects the default drive letters being assigned.
 
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I have a feeling now after reading your post about X: drive that you aren't talking about the desktop wallpaper, and probably want to edit the Windows Setup background and installers, like how some custom gaming ISO do?
 
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WinPE's wallpaper is easy to replace on the mounted boot.wim's image folder. Changing Setup.exe's graphics requires ResourceHacker, and by forum rules we can't really discuss any executable mods here. The answers to that question are not hard to find elsewhere.
 
Hellbovine said:
I have a feeling now after reading your post about X: drive that you aren't talking about the desktop wallpaper, and probably want to edit the Windows Setup background and installers, like how some custom gaming ISO do?
Click to expand...
No, I just want to edit the desktop Wallpaper. nothing else.
 
Simple - replace D\: with mounthdir of NTLite image and username with your own and point it to the image you want to have instead - remember Web folder structure in Windows from origin pic to replace:
takeown /f "D:\NTLite\Temp\NLTmpMnt\Windows\Web" /r /d y

ICACLS "D:\NTLite\Temp\NLTmpMnt\Windows\Web" /grant ”USERNAME”:F /T

RD /s /q D:\NTLite\Temp\NLTmpMnt\Windows\Web
Click to expand...
 
Hello, i want to set an specific image as wallpaper for an specific user. i`m not sure where to execute the commands postet by fransis11
Has this to be done in the post-setup section or somewhere else?
many thanks in advance!
 
Not possible - every user gets same wallpaper from /Web folder.
The CMD is executed on a loaded NTL image before start Apply - in the example D:\ drive.
 
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