This tutorial has been created mainly for customization lovers. Many times you change Windows login screen background to your favorite wallpaper but the "Windows branding logo" which shows the installed Windows edition name, hides the bottom area of the wallpaper and annoys you like hell.
Today in this tutorial, we'll learn how to remove the "Windows branding logo" as well as "Ease of Access" button from login screen in Windows Vista and 7.
So here we start the tutorial:
1. First take ownership of "%windir%\System32\authui.dll" file and then open it in Resource Hacker.
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.
2. Now press "Ctrl+F" keys or select "Find Text" option from "View" menu.
3. To remove "Windows Branding Logo", type following string in the Find what text box:
element id="atom(Branding)"
Click on "Find Next" button and it'll go to following line as shown in the screenshot:
4. Replace the existing <element id="atom(Branding)"/> line with following one:
<element id="atom(Branding)" layoutpos="none"/>
5. Now to remove "Ease of Access" button, search for button id="atom(Accessibility)" string similar to Step 3. It'll show you following line:
<button id="atom(Accessibility)" tooltip="true" layoutpos="left"/>
Simply change layoutpos="left" to layoutpos="none" so that it'll look like following:
<button id="atom(Accessibility)" tooltip="true" layoutpos="none"/>
6. That's it, click on "Compile Script" button.
7. Now save the file at some other location, for example in D: drive.
8. Rename original "authui.dll" file present in "System32" folder to "authui_backup.dll".
9. Now copy your new modified "authui.dll" file to "System32" folder.
10. Restart your system and after restart Windows will start using your new modified file and you'll not see the "Windows branding logo" and "Ease of Access" button on login screen.
PS: Windows Vista "authui.dll" file contains only a single instance of (Branding) and (Accessibility) strings, so you'll need to replace them only once using Step 4 and 5 but Windows 7 contains 3 instances of these strings, so you'll need to change all the 3 instances in the file.
NOTE: If you want to use a free tool to customize Windows 7 login screen, check following list:
Ultimate Collection of the Best Free Tools to Customize Windows 7 Login Screen
This article was posted by VG in following section: Resource Hacker, Windows 7, Windows Vista.
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Himanshu Rao
Great tutorial man, hats off to you.
blue11
i just followed the instruction and now my laptop is in chaos. after i did all the steps my laptop hangs. when i reset it the "windows is starting" appeared, after that nothing but black screen and mouse cursor.
i feel like crying! there is nothing i can do since i cannot get into my computer. i tried to boot from safe mode but still the same. what have gone wrong? what can i do to revert my computer settings? please help!
my OS is windows 7 64bit.
blue11
"Ya, definitely have to edit both syswow and system32 dll's in 64 bit OS's. I forgot to do the syswow dll and the logon screen would not appear. It took me a while ot figure out what the OS letter designation was from the system repair console (it was D:\ for me on a laptop). Ill just leave it alone I think"
@brent d, do mean you were able to revert your computer? how did you do it? my logon screen does not appear also after boot up. i'm using windows 7 64bit.
VG
^^ Thats really sad to know that you are facing this problem. You can boot using Windows setup disc and select Repair Windows option and then you can open Command Prompt from the given options. Now you can restore the default file.
Or you can repair Windows using setup disc and it'll automatically restore default file.
Or if you have another Windows installed in your system, you can boot into that OS and restore default file.