Monday, February 25, 2013

Remove DELL custom login colors on Server 2003

I was doing work on a P2V setup for a customer just last week and every time I tried to login to one of the SBS 2003 servers I got this high resolution wallpaper with a DELL server on it and the login boxes were black.  Needless to say this was very annoying.  I did a bit of research on the web and here's how I fixed it all.

1. Removed the login wallpaper by renaming the DELL wallpaper name in %systemroot%\system32 folder.
2. Made some quick registry edits listed below to restore all of the colors on the system so I could see what I was typing and get rid of that black box problem.

**NOTE:  I recommend you copy and paste the following into a text file.  Then rename it logoncolorfix.reg and merge it into the registry that way.  It saves a lot of typing.  Make sure you including the Windows Registry Editor line.**

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors]
"ActiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"ActiveTitle"="10 36 106"
"AppWorkSpace"="128 128 128"
"Background"="102 111 116"
"ButtonAlternateFace"="181 181 181"
"ButtonDkShadow"="64 64 64"
"ButtonFace"="212 208 200"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonLight"="212 208 200"
"ButtonShadow"="128 128 128"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GradientActiveTitle"="166 202 240"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="192 192 192"
"GrayText"="128 128 128"
"Hilight"="10 36 106"
"HilightText"="255 255 255"
"HotTrackingColor"="0 0 128"
"InactiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"InactiveTitle"="128 128 128"
"InactiveTitleText"="212 208 200"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="255 255 225"
"Menu"="212 208 200"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="212 208 200"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"Window"="255 255 255"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"

Once this is done, restart your server and the next time you login you will see that the high resolution wallpaper is gone and the login boxes are restored to their normal colors.

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