When you create a new user account in Windows 7, it assigns a random picture to your newly created account. This user account picture appears on the Windows logon screen and on the Start Menu. You can later choose a different picture from the Control Panel. When you pick a new picture, it shows you an gallery of default user pictures that you can choose from. If you want to add your own custom pictures to this step then you can do so easily by following the simple steps shown below :
- First of all, you need to prepare the pictures that you want to add to your default user pictures gallery in Windows. You can use your own pictures or you can search Google Images for such pictures. The pictures can be any type and size. But ideally, you should add BMP image files of size around 128×128 pixels (width 128 pixel and height 128x pixel). If you have JPEG, GIF or PNG pictures, then you can resize and convert them to BMP format using a free image viewer like IrfanView. The non-BMP file types can be added as they are, but they will not display as thumbnails in the default user pictures gallery.
- Press the hotkey Win + R to open the Run dialog. You can also open it from the Start Menu. Type or copy/paste the following in the Run dialog and press Enter :
%ProgramData%MicrosoftUser Account PicturesDefault Pictures
This would open the Default Pictures folder in Windows Explorer.
- Once you have your images ready, the next step is pretty easy. Now its just a matter of copy pasting the files. Just copy the image files you prepared earlier into the Default Pictures folder that you have just opened. You would be asked for administrator credentials when you try to copy the files.
- That’s it. Now if you try to change the user account picture for your user account (or for some other user if you are an administrator), then the newly added user pictures would be shown in the picture gallery.