Lockout without Screensaver

[ericparrish]

Does anyone know of a way to enforce a Windows Lockout after X minutes with the screensaver disabled?

[samp761]

The only way I can think on how to do this is to

1. Enable "Force specific screen saver" and enter "scrnsave.scr" which is the blank screensaver.
2. Enable "Password protect the screen saver"
3. Enable "Screen saver timeout" set to the amount of seconds of idle time before screensaver is turned on.
4. Enable "Prevent changing screen saver" - since it sounds like you do not want to have a graphical screensaver.


I have not set this specific example before, but I believe it will work.

[ericparrish]

Im afraid that wont work.
That is still applying a screen saver, but it's blank.

The idea comes fomr VMware Best Practices that recommend you disable the screen saver. But this conflicts with Microsoft Best Practices that recommend autolock after X minutes of being idle.

So the idea is to continue to autolock while having the screen saver disabled. I believe VMware is recommending this to avoid that "minute but present" overhead of running a screen saver on a computer that does not have a screen.

Again, it's a best practice, not a requirement

[samp761]

ahhh.. wasn't sure why for the no screen saver, but that clears it up a bit.

In my opinion, I personally would take a secure station over the 1Mb of memory & the low I/O of a screensaver anyday, but I understand where you are coming from when trying to fine tune VM's.

[ericparrish]

OK, I figured it out. The wording of the VMware recommendation is important.

VMware is trying to avoid the screen saver at LOGON, not once you are logged in. This is only available to change by regeistry key. Obviously this can be done via GPO Preference.

VMware KB: Disabling the Windows Logon Screen Saver

Click Start > Run, type regedit, click OK.
Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop


Double-click the ScreenSaveActive string value item in the Details pane.
In the Value data box, replace the number 1 with the number 0 , and then click OK.

[formakerr]

DOES anyone know hot to change the time to be longer so I do not have to log in if I am away from my computer for 5 minutes?

[ericparrish]

User Configuration-->Policies-->Administrative Templates-->ControlPanel-->Display-->ScreenSaverTimeOut

Number Of Seconds to Wait to enable the Screen Saver