Set Desktop Background Colour With A GPO

IT Problem

On windows 7,xp or any other microsoft OS you would like to change the background colour of your desktops across the whole of your network or organisation automatically.

Out of the box server 2008 or server 2003 does not have a policy for this, here is a ADM template that you can download, install and set the background colour of your desktops .

IT Solution

First copy and paste the txt below into notepad, then save the file as “backgroundcolour.adm”

CLASS USER

CATEGORY !!categoryname

KEYNAME “Control PanelControl Panel is part of Windows Operating Systems. It allows the user access to many “applets” that allow the user to setup and configure various parts of the operating system. These applets are grouped into different sections such as “System and Security” and “Hardware and Sound”. Sometimes 3rd part applets are installed into the control panel. Most of these applets can be run by going to “run” and entering the app.cpl. Cpl is the extension to control panel applets. Here are examples or control panel applets. Accessibility Options access.cpl Add or Remove Programs appwiz.cpl Display Properties desk.cpl Windows Firewall firewall.cpl Add Hardware hdwwiz.cpl Internet Options inetcpl.cpl Regional & Language Options intl.cpl Java Control Panel javacpl.cpl Game Controllers joy.cpl Mouse Properties main.cpl Sound & Audio Device Settings mmsys.cpl Network Connections ncpa.cpl Wireless Network Setup Wizard netsetup.cpl User Accounts nusrmgr.cpl ODBC Data Source Administrator odbccp32.cpl Power Options powercfg.cpl System Properties sysdm.cpl Phone and Modem Options telephon.cpl Time and Date Options timedate.cpl Windows Security Center wscui.cpl Automatic UpdatesAutomatic Updates is a service offered by Microsoft to update Microsoft products with the latest patches, features and security updates. In earlier OS`s the system was web based only, you went to the update website such as www.windowsupdate.com and the site scanned your system for required patches. Windows 2000 sp3 and Xp used Background Intelligent Transfer Service to update without any user input, In later OS`s the pc or server polls the update server ( be it either a local WSUS Server or Microsoft’s update server ) to see if there are any updates to the operating system or applications running on the system. If so it will download and install them. The system is fully configurable, you can specify dates it will poll the server for updates, whether it will notify of updates and wait for you to run them or it can be set to fully automated and download, configure and install them all automatically. In Windows 7 and Vista, when the system has update it will initiate a countdown until it automatically reboots and completes the update process. You can catch this countdown and extend it if required. wuaucpl.cpl Active Directory Manager admgmt.msc \Colors”

POLICY !!policyname

EXPLAIN !!explaintext

PART !!labeltext DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED

VALUENAME “Background”

ITEMLIST

NAME “Black” VALUE “0 0 0″

END ITEMLIST

END PART

END POLICY

END CATEGORY

[strings]

categoryname=”Background Color Options”

policyname=”Change the background color of the client computer”

explaintext=”This policy sets the background color of the client computer”

labeltext=”Choose a color”

We then need to save that file to your server. Once done open up group policy management and then create a new gpo and link it to your desired user objects or pc`s.Then do the following.

Edit the GPO you have created

Go to User Configuration => Administrative Templates, right click Administrative Templates and then Add Template

Browse to the Backgroundcolour.adm and add it in.

Under Administrative Templates you will now see a custom category called “Set Background Colour”

To change the colour of the desktop, select “Desktop Background Color policy”, then enable it.

Simply then enter the RGB value of the colour you want.

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