Windows 8 Previews

An article about pre-release versions of Windows 8, including alpha, Developer Preview, Consumer Preview, and Release Preview builds.

Builds 8102 and earlier
[todo: identify later builds that still feature 7's logon BG, along with when img1 stopped being used] Early builds alternate between using the Windows 7 RC default wallpaper or the one featured in the RTM release. By build 7788, this would be replaced with an infamous blue-green gradient wallpaper with the text "shhh... let's not leak our hard work" at the top. Between builds 7927 and 8064, the wallpaper changed several times, each featuring a fractured wordoku puzzle that says "Start me up", with more letters being added in each revision of the wallpaper.[add ref here] During this stage, 7's leftover wallpapers were removed. By 8095, the puzzle is no longer present, with the default wallpaper being set to 7's logon background, while a panoramic lake wallpaper has been added as an alternate option.

Builds 8128 to 8140
With the 7 wallpapers being removed, new themes were added, consisting of photography taken by an unknown Microsoft employee. img0 and img1 from previous builds remained. The theme names remain the same as the original 7 themes despite many not correlating anymore, although there is no Nature theme, so as a result the new wallpapers start at img7. These wallpapers were not cropped, so most of them remain at 4:3 aspect ratios rather than 16:10.

Builds 8148 to 8161
By build 8148, the number of themes went down to just two and they were changed up; several wallpapers were removed, while a few new ones were added. At this point, the panoramic lake wallpaper was removed.

Builds 8176 to 8520
[todo: investigate build 8431] By build 8176, Theme1 was removed and replaced with a new Nature theme. The default wallpaper was replaced with a Metro version of the 7 Beta wallpaper by build 8186, although several non-winmain builds in 81xx to 85xx feature the previous wallpaper. By build 8195 (fbl_dnt3_wireless), Theme2 was also removed, although not replaced with another theme yet, however this theme still appears in some builds up to 8520 along with the previous default wallpaper. The default wallpaper was changed to one consisting of grey "8"s by build 8330, and one featuring a field of red tulips by build 8382.

Builds 8513 onwards
By build 8513, the wallpapers that appear in the final release were added.

Lock Screen Wallpapers
[todo: identify build ranges] Lock screen wallpapers were added by build 8xxx. None of these appear in the final release. Much like the other wallpapers, they are highly likely to have been taken by Microsoft themselves.

User Account Pictures
Windows 8 came with the same sample user account pictures from Windows 7 up to build 80xx (the new default user account picture were added by build 7899). By build 80xx, the number of user account pictures went down to just two; with the exception of guest, all of Windows 7's user account pictures were removed. By build 8161, 2 absolutely identical user account pictures were used for default accounts and guest account respectively.

By build 8195, the default user account picture was replaced with the one that appears in the final release.

Picture Password
Picture Password was introduced in build 8xxx.

You can see these images in the Picture Password setup tutorial when setting it for the first time: