Look at the top of the Start menu in Windows XP. See the picture to the left of your user name? It was assigned by default when you set up your user account. (You won’t see a picture here if you use the Classic Start menu instead of the Windows XP-style Start menu or if you’re attached to a Windows domain.)
That same picture appears on the Welcome screen, where you log on to your user account. You probably have a frog, or a rubber duck, or a palm tree or a cat as your picture. But did you know you can change this picture? Did you know you’re not stuck with the lame set of sample images that come with Windows XP? Here’s how to personalize the image attached to your logon.
To change the picture used for your account, click Start, and then click the picture at the top of the Start menu. (This shortcut opens the User Accounts Control Panel and is a good one to remember; if you wanted to change something else about your account, you could click the Back button to see other settings.)
Click Browse for more pictures and find an image file you’d like to attach to your account. When you click Open, Windows copies your image to the folder where it stores user photos: %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\User Account Pictures. The original image remains intact and unchanged. The copy is resized so that it is 48 pixels wide or high, and saved in Bitmap format, using your user name as the file name. I recommend that you start with a square image; if you use a rectangular image, the width or height will be reduced to maintain the image proportions.
Ed Bott 