Change and customize Windows 7's Logon screen wallpaper

A Registry tweak

The process begins with a very minor Registry tweak. Even for those who would not normally feel comfortable editing the Registry, this one’s a piece of cake. To begin, click the Start button and type Regedit in the Search box. Then, select the appropriate result and press [Enter]. When you do, you’ll see the User Account Control, shown in Figure A, and will need to click the Yes button.
Note: Editing the Windows Registry file is not without its risks, so be sure you have a verified backup before making any changes.

Once the Registry Editor launches, locate and right-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key and select the Find command. When you see the Find dialog box, type OEMBackground in the text box and make sure that only the Values check box is selected, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

When the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background key opens, locate and double-click the OEMBackground value. When you see the Edit DWORD dialog box, change the value data from 0 to 1, as shown in Figure C. (If the OEMBackground value doesn’t exist in the Background key, you’ll need to pull down the Edit menu from that key and select New | DWORD (32-bit) Value).

How to Enable / Disable Hibernation in Windows XP/Vista/7

Hiberfil.sys and Windows Hibernate function

To understand why hiberfil.sys exists, we must look at the Windows Hibernate function. When you activate Hibernate, Windows takes a snapshot of your current session (all your running programs, open files, etc.) and writes that information to your hard drive. Hibernate was designed to speed up shutdowns and restarts and save power on laptops.

Hiberfil.sys, as the name suggests, is the file to which Windows saves the snap-shot data. Thus, the file is always equal in size to the total amount of available RAM on the computer.On a computer with plenty of free disk space, having such a large file just hanging around usually isn’t a problem. But if you’re running low on hard drive space and never use the Hibernate feature, hiberfil.sys is unnecessarily eating up valuable disk real estate.

Disabling Windows Hibernation

As I noted earlier, you can manually delete hiberfil.sys, but it will just come back. To permanently remove the file, you must disable the Windows Hibernate function. You can do this through either the Windows GUI or the command line.