Customizing the Windows XP Logon

I'll wrap this chapter up by showing you how to customize the logon process in Windows XP. The first thing I want to show you is how to customize the screen saver that Windows XP uses when it's displaying the Log On To Windows dialog box. There's no user interface for configuring this screen saver. However, you can change it in the key HKU\.DEFAULT \Control Panel\Desktop. Set the value of SCRNSAVE.EXE to the name of the screen saver file you want to use. The default value is Logon.scr, which is the logon screen saver. If you want to use the Starfield screen saver instead, set SCRNSAVE.EXE to Ssstars.scr.

The second customization is a bit more serious. Companies often want to display an acceptable usage policy when users log on to their computers. You can do that by setting the REG_SZ value LegalNoticeCaption to the caption you want to display in the window's title bar, and the REG_SZ value LegalNoticeText to the text you want to display in the window. Both values are in the key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion \Winlogon. For example, you can set LegalNoticeCaption to Corporate Policy and LegalNoticeText to Corporate policy prohibits the use of this computer for actual work.