How does one prevent a Microsoft workstation from locking?

Question

We have a group policy that forces workstations to lock after X minutes. But from time to time I would like to suspend the law of the GPO. I already have a tiny Auto-It script that clicks the Control Key every two minutes and have looked at the registry changes that would need to be made to prevent the locking in a less obtrusive to the user way. With no time to spare on such efforts, I thought I would ask the wonderful serverfault community, has anyone run across a (preferably open source) utility that would prevent a workstation from locking?

Thanks

Answer 1

The REG file below disables the screen saver. Including the default Windows screen saver which always locks the screen and is engaged when the user's screen saver is set to "none".

To defeat Active Directory, these settings must be made each time AD refreshes and before the next screen saver time out.

Turns out, I was just struggling with the default screen saver and only had to remove the SCRNSAVE key, so I haven't pursued a good way to continually make these changes.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveActive"="0"
"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="0"
"SCRNSAVE.EXE"=-

Answer 2

GPOs exist exactly for this purpose: enforce configuration settings on domain computers. They would be quite useless if they were avoidable.

If you can't modify the policy and/or various other domain parameters (OU of the user account you're logging on with, etc.), there's nothing you can do other than moving the mouse or hitting keys. Your only option is to log on to the workstation using a local user account, to which the domain's user policies (including screen saver ones) are not applied.

Answer 3

I took the opportunity to expand a bit on Nathan Hartley's excellent answer by producing a Powershell script that will clear the ScreenSaveActive setting every 10 seconds. Trivial to do in a single line but I obviously had to over-complicate it and gave it pretty progress bars for the wait time and such (feeping creaturism!).

$IntervalSeconds = 10
$IntervalMilli = $IntervalSeconds * 1000
$counter = 0
$LastWrite = ''
$StartTime = get-date
$FudgeMilli = 20
while ($true) {
    $counter++
    $LastWrite = Get-Date -uformat '%T'
    Set-ItemProperty -path 'HKCU:\Control Panel\Desktop' -Name 'ScreenSaveActive' -Value 0
    Write-Progress -id 0 -Activity "No Screen is Safe" -PercentComplete $($Counter % 100) -Status "Last Write: $($LastWrite) Write Count: $($Counter) Elapsed: $($($(get-date) - $StartTime).ToString())"
    for($i = 1; $i -le 100; $i++) {
        [INT] $MilliSecondsLeft = $(($IntervalMilli - ($i * $intervalMilli/100)))
        [INT] $SecondsLeft = ($MilliSecondsLeft * .001)
        $PercentComplete = (($i * $intervalMilli/100)/$IntervalMilli) * 100
        Write-Progress -id 1 -ParentId 0 -Activity "Lying in wait for $($IntervalSeconds) Seconds" -status 'ZZZzzzz...' -PercentComplete $PercentComplete -SecondsRemaining $SecondsLeft
        Write-Progress -id 0 -Activity "No Screen is Safe" -PercentComplete $($Counter % 100) -Status "Last Write: $($LastWrite) Write Count: $($Counter) Elapsed: $($($(get-date) - $StartTime).ToString())"
        start-sleep -Milliseconds $($($IntervalMilli / 100) - $FudgeMilli)
    }
    Write-Progress -id 1 -ParentId 0 -Activity "Lying in wait for $($IntervalSeconds) Seconds" -status 'Snerkt!' -PercentComplete 100 -Completed
}

It doesn't do exactly the number of seconds (which is why where is a Fudge Factor built in to adjust the interval timing closer to reality) and I didn't spend a ton of time to optimize every last detail.

Hopefully someone may find this of use down the line.

Answer 4

I always find this technology here quuuite useful.

Answer 5

Assuming that you let the users select which screensaver they can use, you could temporarily select "none" as your screensaver and the workstation won't lock.