Setting background color

BadHellie

BadHellie

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Hi, it looks like there is NO WAY to set the background color of a a Windows 10 installation (22H2) devoid of background pictures.
I tried setting the relevant key (HKCU\Control Panel\Colors, Background value) to no avail, it always gets set to 0,0,0 (black) at the first boot.
I tried modifying the ISO registry, integrating a hive file, or even setting the key value with the reg command in Post Setup, nope.
Any idea ? Thx
 
I've documented it in a few places on the forum (link). As the desktop appears for the first time after a clean install of Windows is when the Aero theme gets added into the registry, and when that happens it overwrites any personalizations that were previously set.

Every issue related to personalization settings being overwritten can be resolved by simply preventing the install of the Aero theme, and then suddenly users have the freedom to implement a number of tweaks that never used to work right, because they were being overwritten. This is objectively the best method too, since it's the only solution that actually addresses the root cause of the problem. All the other workarounds that exist have potential consequences, whereas my method has no known quirks associated with it at this time.
 
Oh makes sense, thanks ! I was actually suspecting a similar thing. And now I saw you explained here how to do it:
B

Thread 'How can I change the default settings when Windows finishes installing?'

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to get some settings regarding the wallpaper, dark theme, and system colors to be applied automatically at the end of the Windows installation, as well as when creating a new user, but I have not been successful. The closest I've come to getting it to work as I intend is that the settings are applied correctly when it finishes installing Windows, but when I tried to create a new user, the default Windows settings are kept.

I'm doing all this through registry modifications, but I don't know if I should do is through the Registry option in NTLite or it is better...

Btw try to understand and to bear patience, I am still a beginner here, I could not know all that, also a search on the forum didn't lead me suddently to the relevant discussions. Well getting rid of that 'Aero' theme (how suxx, for me the only Aero properly said was the one of win7, not this sh*t lol) opens up tons of possibilities !
 
Uhm... as usual, I was optimistic for nothing :(
I added these to my .reg file, following your suggestion:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

before setting also
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="40 80 100"
"IWasHere"=""

Nope. At the first boot the screen is black, regedit shows that "Background" is 0,0,0 and "IWasHere" IS in fact there (that was just to check if my reg file was correctly included).
So what ??
I reiterate in case you missed it: Windows 10 22H2...
 
You likely didn't follow all the instructions. There's missing keys between our posts, and did you reinstall Windows or do this live? Is this a VM? I use the same set of tweaks in my Optimized Image guide, which is installed on both my desktop and laptop using W10 22H2, and it works.
 
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Dear, please try to understand two things.
1. For a beginner it is not easy to figure out everything and most things are NOT obvious as they are for you. I think that setting up a beginner's section in this forum would not be a bad idea, so at least who wants to help knows in advance the proper spirit to approach users with.
2. I understand you keep referring to your guides, but you should consider that not everybody is meant to follow them literally and other people may have different goals, in particular you tend to do every tweak using registry vs. components removal, well this is not mean to be the optimal solution for everybody

Anyway, to summarize.
I am not sure what you exactly mean with "live" and I do not use any VM. I *iteratively* create an ISO image with NTL and I save my tweaks in a preset, I install it on a test machine, and then I go back to NTL to try fixing what is not OK yet, to create a new ISO. In case there are better workflows, I apologize in advance, as a beginner I cannot figure out any. Nobody is born as a teacher.

At present, I do my registry tweaks by using a custom .reg file which I integrate in NTL by the apposite Registry section.
I am NOT modifying the ISO registry using regedit in the right panel, and I am NOT using .reg files as commands in the Post Setup.

Here is what I do in my custom .reg file, beyond other tweaks (which work instead).

If I set HKCU\Control Panel\Color\ Background value, at every boot I open regedit and I find it set to 0,0,0.
So you suggested to prevent Aero theme being installed, which would overwrite many cosmetic registry values.
That's fine, so I also added

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"=""
"InstallThemeLight"=""

to my reg file, as you suggested in another thread.
But as I said, this has no effect because Background gets overwritten anyway.

Therefore, how can I prevent the Aero theme being installed ?
 
Slow down, you're getting hyped up and it's confusing things. Let's get to the root of the real issue by starting over. Based on the question initially asked by you, the goal was to find a way to have a different solid color background, rather than it being a picture or black. I extracted the information from the link in my first reply to create a registry file I attached here. My computers use these same tweaks, and it works as intended.

The proper way to verify tweaks is to exclude all others while testing, to eliminate variables. The summary of what to do here is to download the attachment, load an unmodified W10 22H2 ISO (downloaded directly from Microsoft's website) into NTLite, integrate this registry file into the image and then process it. Install the new image and the background should now be solid blue.

I've been watching and participating in all your threads, and those indicated you have the experience to fill in the gaps in the instructions I've given, so I didn't think you'd struggle with making the attached registry file. If you get lost or it doesn't work, please help me figure out at what step in the process we might be failing, then we can focus on fixing that and trying again.
 
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I am of course grateful for the time you spend for me trying to help :)
And no, I am not surely stupid, OTC, I am a scientist and coder lol, I am just a beginner in *this scenario*, which is another story ;)

Anyway, do you think that using a 22H2 ISO taken from uupdump.net rather than from Microsoft makes any difference ? Cos I took mine there, and if possible I'd avoid to get my hands dirty downloading from M$ (plus the hassle of dld'ing several GBs again, with the slow connections we have here in Italy...)
Also, I had to skip OOBE and most other annoyances in Unattended, plus creating my admin account, just to make the installation time reasonable; however for the test I did NOT remove or tweak ANYTHING ELSE, other than your .reg file. Or you think that even these few actions may interfere with the test ?
Because even in this case I boot into a black screen, and Regedit confirms that Background is "0 0 0" ! And, again, the .reg file was actually integrated, since the second time I also added a fake value "IWasHere"="", which I could find in place after the boot...
Any idea ?

EDIT: following further experiments, it turned out that the ONLY WAY to set the background color registry value is using a Post-Setup, Post-Login command such as
reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Colors" /v Background /t REG_SZ /d "20 40 80" /f
In this case, I am still booting into a black screen but the Background registry value is effectively set to "20 40 80", just this value can't be used yet; therefore, a simple log-out/log-in or restart is enough to have the background physically set to the desired color.

A due note: one may think that struggling for a stupid thing like setting the default BG color is a waste of time. Indeed, my goal is rather trying to understand how to reliably set some registry tweaks without interference, changing the background color is just a test.
 
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I responded to the latest message on another thread (link) that was related to this one.
 
Well, if SOMEBODY ELSE has an idea he is welcome and I thank him in advance. Note that using an ISO downloaded from M$ did not solve the issue.
As I wrote in the other thread, I need to skip OOBE and all things in Unattended and create my account there. So if your trick of setting theme values to "" does not work for this reason, I kindly ask for another trick ;)
Any other ways to prevent the default theme being installed ? ^_^
 
Oh well. I tried integrating purple.reg to an UNTOUCHED Windows 10 22H2 image taken from Microsoft. I had to pass thru the whole setup stage. At boot I am left with a BLACK screen, while I see the Start button (when pressed) and the lock screen backgrounds are purple.
This is the *identical* result I am getting using my ISO from uupdump + Unattended settings.
After all I don't know how the background could ever become purple, given I see no hives relevant to Background color inside purple.reg.
And I remind you that the title of this topic was inherent to the BACKGROUND color.
So ?
 
That's expected using purple.reg, because the point of that other thread was for having a jpg wallpaper at the desktop and lock screen, as well as purple accent colors and the dark app/system scheme. Also, a black background will only be visible with purple.reg if the wallpaper path isn't valid, meaning no editing was done to tailor the tweaks, so it failed to work as expected. If we edit purple.reg we can see that it doesn't have tweaks needed for solid background colors, since it isn't the goal of that file or thread.
 
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Well in the end the only way I could manage to have a custom solid background color was installing a custom theme.
Ok this is rather a didactical/academical experiment, but the truth is that I found no way to avoid the Background registry value being overwritten with 0 0 0.
I had literally to edit a theme with msstyleeditor, set the background to the desired color, integrate it in my ISO and force its installation with those reg values.
Note that the background color can apparently be set either in the sysmetrics field or simply in the .theme file using any text editor.

To be precise, I made even more. I used a nice Windows 7 theme for Windows 10, I injected in the ISO a patched themesui.dll and uxinit.dll (with UltraUXThemePatcher) in order to use custom themes (after taking ownership on the original dll's to delete them), copied my theme to Windows/Resources/Themes and forced its installation with
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes]
"InstallTheme"="MyThemeName"
"InstallThemeLight"="MyThemeName"
"InstallVisualStyle"="MyMsstylesName"

Just to be sure I also set the corresponding values in WOW6432Node\, not sure if both are required or just one though.
Works like a charm.

At the end, I admit that nobody would use a solid color but rather a picture, including me. That was just to provide base Win installs without any custom pictures imposed, to save space, yet with a default background color different from black, which is ugly.
But I admit that another solution could be simply providing a picture made of a solid color lol (injected with NTL option), like a png which being compressed would occupy few bytes if made of just one color ;)

It's really lovely how many things, tweaks and tricks NTL allows :) I really love it, and I am sure I haven't explored its whole potential yet...
 
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