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Custom Group Policy(GPO) for Changing Desktop Background Colour

As per requirement, we need to change all client windows (XP, and 2003) desktop BG color, but it's impossible to change BG colour manually over 1000 desktop. So, we have to do it with an automatic process.

First we have to find out what happened on registry, while we changing Desktop BG color, and to do so, we need a tools which take a Windows Registry Snap after and before changing desktop BG color,

RegShot is the best free tools for that,

Download:

  RegShot (89.2 KiB, 322 hits)

So, finally we able to trace out that registry change,

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[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Background"="26 26 26"

Initially we add an extra line on logon script, to change desktop BG color to black,

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REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Colors" /v Background /t REG_SZ /d "0 0 0" /f

It works fine on all Windows XP Machine, but not with few Windows 2000 computer, in that case we are searching for some alternative solution,
Now we decided to create a ADM file for custom group policy,  to force BG color change via GPO.

And here we are, with the following adm file we can change BG color to Black, White, Red, Brown, Yellow, Green, Sky, Brown, Blue, Dark Blue, Pink, Grey...

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CLASS USER
	CATEGORY !!categoryname
		KEYNAME "Control Panel\Colors"
		POLICY !!policyname
	EXPLAIN !!explaintext
	PART !!labeltext DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
	VALUENAME "Background"
	ITEMLIST
	NAME "Normal" VALUE "0 128 128"
	NAME "Black" VALUE "0 0 0"
	NAME "White" VALUE "255 255 255"
	NAME "Red" VALUE "255 0 0"
	NAME "Brown" VALUE "128 0 0"
	NAME "Yellow" VALUE "255 255 0"
	NAME "Green" VALUE "0 128 0"
	NAME "Sky" VALUE "0 255 255"
	NAME "Brown" VALUE "0 0 255"
	NAME "Blue" VALUE "0 0 255"
	NAME "Dark Blue" VALUE "0 0 128"
	NAME "Pink" VALUE "255 0 255"
	NAME "Grey" VALUE "160 160 164"
	END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY
[strings]
categoryname="Desktop BG Colour Changer"
policyname="Change the background color of the client computer via Group Policy"
explaintext="This policy sets the background color of the client computer. Custom Group Policy - http://technochat.in! By Saugata Datta."
labeltext="Select Colour"

A very good guide on Writing Custom ADM Files for System Policy Editor

If you want to do same, just download above desktopbgcolor.adm file.
Open GP management console and add custom template from Add/Remove Templates...

Click Add to select ADM file,

Now goto View>Filtering and remove last tick.

Now you can modify Policy settings.

Enable policy if you want...

All done...
Thanks.

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The Custom Group Policy(GPO) for Changing Desktop Background Colour by Techno Chat|Tech Blog!!, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.