Windows Vista offers a variety of customization options for your welcome picture. You can choose to have a default picture, or you can create your own. Here are some tips on how to customize your welcome picture in Windows Vista:

  1. Choose the Picture Format The first step is to choose thePictureFormat. This setting affects how the image is displayed when you first open Windows Vista. You can choose to have a default picture, or you can create your own. The following three options are available: JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
  2. Choose the Size and Format of Your Picture Next, you need to decide how large your welcome picture should be. You can choose either a small or large image. The size is important because it determines how many people will be able to see your Welcome Message at once. You also have the option of choosing a format such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF. The following three options are available: JPEG, PNG, and TIFF.
  3. Choose How Many People Will Be Able To View Your Picture at Once If you want more people to be able to see your Welcome Message at once, then you should choose HowManyPeopleWillBeAbleToViewYourPictureAtOnce from the Picture Format drop-down list. The following three options are available: 1) Default - All users will be able to view your message; 2) User - Only those who have logged in will be able to view it; 3) Group - All members of a group will be able to view it together

What you can do instead is add your pictures to the list of default pictures, and delete pictures you’ll never use.

In case you don’t remember, you open Control Panel \ User Accounts \ Change Your Picture to get to the list of pictures.

 

All of the pictures are stored in a hidden folder buried deep within your program data directory.

All you have to do is just remove the pictures you don’t want, and add the pictures you do want. You just need to make sure that your pictures are 128×128 resolution in bitmap format. If you want the pictures to be ordered in a certain way, you can name them in order.

If you’d like to copy your current picture, it is stored in the following file:

The default user picture (the flower) is stored in the following file:

Now that we’ve customized the list of pictures, you can see that the baby tux picture I added is still in the list, even though we’re using one of the default pictures.