[Tip] Customize Text Messages on Windows XP and Windows 7 Login Screens

In this tutorial, we’ll tell you about the files containing the text strings such as “Welcome”, “Type your password”, “To begin click your user name”, etc, which are displayed in Windows XP Login Screen. This tutorial is not for changing the Login screen look (like images, etc.) but for changing the text of Login screen.

So, You’ll have to edit following 2 files:

• LogonUI.exe
• Winlogon.exe

LogonUI.exe file contains most of the text entries of the login screen and Winlogon.exe file contains the text, which is displayed when you login/logout the windows, like Windows is shutting down…, etc.

Editing LogonUI.exe File

1. Open %windir%\System32\LogonUI.exe file in Resource Hacker and navigate to String Table section.

2. Here you’ll find sub-directories, 1,2,3,4,7, in which only first 3 directories 1,2,3 are of our use.

3. Following are the locations of some interesting text entries, which you might like to change:

PS: “\n” is used to give line break. You can also use it in your customized text. Also there are many other text entries, that you might like to change.

Editing Winlogon.exe File

1. Open %windir%\System32\Winlogon.exe file in Resource Hacker and navigate to String Table section.

2. Here only 105, 106, 110 and 111 are of our use.

3. Actually String Table -> 106 -> 1033 is only of our use, but if you have enabled “Extended/verbose shutdown messages” option, then other sections (105, 110, 111) will also be of our use.

4. In 106 section, 1682, 1684, 1687, 1690 and 1691 are the interesting ones. You can change their text with your desired one. These entries contains the text, like Loading your personal settings…, Saving your settings…, Windows is starting up…, etc.

NOTE 1: If you are facing problems while saving a file after editing in resource hacker, then make sure you have disabled WFP (Windows File Protection) service using WFP Patcher or use Replacer to replace the file.

NOTE 2: If you get “Cannot create file” error message while saving the file, please check following tutorial:

How to Fix “Cannot Create File” Error Message While Saving Files in Resource Hacker?

UPDATE: If you want to change text strings of Windows 7 login screen, you’ll need to edit winlogon.exe.mui and wininit.exe.mui files present in “%windir%\System32\en-US\” folder.

NOTE: Here %windir% represents “Windows” directory which can be found in the system drive where Windows is installed. In most of the cases its C:\Windows. And if your Windows language is different, then replace en-US in the above path with your language code.

When you modify winlogon.exe.mui file in Resource Hacker, you’ll find the text strings in following location:

And wininit.exe.mui file contains the text strings in following location:

Thanks to our reader “TheAslan” for sharing Windows 7 file information…