Set default menu size and font for new users?

Is there a way in windows 7 to set default values for newly created users so they have consistent menu size and font?

Thank you

Is your aim to prevent new users changing these so that they remain uniform?

Whatever, it sounds like a job for group policy. Run gpedit.msc (not available in Home version) and see if that gives you what you need.

Under Group Policy Editor > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization, there is a policy called "Load a specific theme" and I have set this policy. Unfortunately, this policy doesn't seem to work on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS I have verified that the theme I want to set as default is valid and, I have verified that the registry key is set at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization\ThemeFile="C:\Windows\Resource s\Themes\myTheme.theme"

I know the theme is good because it comes up as an installed theme if I right click on the desktop and select personalize. If I manually select this theme after creating a new user account, then my colors and wallpaper are correct. Why does the theme not come up as the default theme for a new user?

Can somebody at MSFT take a look at this?

Thank you,

erco

erco61 said:

Under Group Policy Editor > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization, there is a policy called "Load a specific theme" and I have set this policy. Unfortunately, this policy doesn't seem to work on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS I have verified that the theme I want to set as default is valid and, I have verified that the registry key is set at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization\ThemeFile="C:\Windows\Resource s\Themes\myTheme.theme"

I know the theme is good because it comes up as an installed theme if I right click on the desktop and select personalize. If I manually select this theme after creating a new user account, then my colors and wallpaper are correct. Why does the theme not come up as the default theme for a new user?

Can somebody at MSFT take a look at this?

Thank you,

erco

Have you also configured the various "Prevent" settings? If not then I suspect that the theme is still essentially optional and therefore not forced as default.

Yes. I did enable and disable as many of the prevent settings as I thought applicable. The default theme specified in the group policy editor and in the registry keys is never the default theme for a new user. I think this is a bug in windows 7 64 bit OS and it is a real problem for my team.

We build HW platforms and develop proprietary applications that require specific settings for menu size, windows color, fonts etc and, we will be going to market soon with our new Windows 7 64 bit OS.

At this point, I can only hope that somebody from MSFT is monitoring this forum and can fix what is broken.

Thank you Chev65,

I saved my current theme to C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\my.theme
and then copied to to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\my.theme

In the group policy editor, I then set the default theme policy and specified the path to the copied theme file. I have set and or unset all of the other group policy settings you describe but, the default theme I have specified is not coming up automatically for a new user.

Since I copied the theme file to its new location, it is now an "installed theme" and a new user can select it by right clicking on the desktop > Personalize and select the theme.

I know this process was working on a 32 bit OS build that I configured for another product. We need this policy to work correctly for our 64 bit OS build. I am increasingly inclined to believe that this is a 64 bit OS bug that needs to be fixed by MSFT.

Thank you for taking the time to look into this issue,

ERCO

Yes, exactly. Any newly created user account needs to have menu size, font, and font size pre set to certain values on his/her first login in order for our applications to look right.

Your suggestion to check both extended and standard tabs was spot on. The 2 tabs had different (albeit valid) paths to viable .theme files. I set both paths to the theme under C:\Windows and then reset them both to the theme under C:\Users but, the default theme still does not present for a new user in either case.

I reviewed the filter and policy settings but, nothing make my theme come up as the default.

There must be a bug in windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Is there an engineer at MSFT who is running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS and can check on this?

I'm sure they have someone more familior with GPE but they would probably charge you for the help. I still can't help to think we missed a step or something is blocking the GPE from doing it's job. It might only work using the default User theme file path, hard to say.

I havn't messed with GPE enough to really know the program yet. I'll do some searching tomorrow and see what I can find out.