Enable ClearType In The Welcome Screen

If you think about the Windows XP Welcome Screen, the first thing that comes in your mind is customizing it. After all, there are plenty of applications allowing you to change the Boot Screen, so why not change what comes after it, too? Anyway, if you're looking for some Windows themes tips and tricks, this is not the right time and place. If you are really going to insist, I may tell you a few things about that in the future, but now we have to talk about a very interesting, and often ignored, topic: ClearType fonts in the Welcome Screen. Are you surprised?

Well, you should be surprised, because I considered this topic irrelevant for a long time, especially because, being the only user of my computer, I changed the settings so my Windows XP would always jump over the Welcome Screen and login automatically to the one&only user account I had. Now, let's talk a little about ClearType, then we can move on and see today's trick about it. Ready or not, here we go...

While everyone says ClearType is very good for having smooth and better readable fonts on LCD screens, I have to say this is not the truth. I have been always using ClearType on CRT screens(no more CRTs for me anymore, but I was just saying), and the difference is just as big as with LCD ones, so be sure to enable ClearType on older CRT screens, too. In Windows XP, the feature is enabled after you login into a certain account, so the Welcome Screen will display jaggy fonts.

As usual, I have to warn you about the risks involved when editing the registry, so be very careful - as long as you make things right, nothing bad can happen. OK, now you have been warned. Move along, move along...

1. Open up the Registry Editor(Start>Run>type Regedit>press Enter)

2. Locate the two following keys:
HKEY_USERS .Default Control Panel Desktop FontSmoothing (String Value)
HKEY_USERS .Default Control Panel Desktop FontSmoothingType (Hexadecimal DWORD Value)

3. Set both these values to 2, and ClearType will be enabled inside the Welcome Screen, as well as being the default setting for every new user you'll create from now on.

Eh...much better now, don't you think? :)