Screen savers in Windows NT

[LynnSims]

Hi,
We have Win NT machines with multiple user profiles. We now have to make sure screen savers are enforced on all machines. Does anyone know whether a passworded screen saver can be set on the machine to activate no matter which user profile is in use? We really don't want to have to make sure every user sets this up in their own profile. That would be a nightmare to keep up with. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Lynn

[scotsmanscott]

Why don't you stop users changing their screensaver with a policy :

"Poledit/User/Control Panel/Display/restrict display/Hide Screensaver tab".

This will make the following registry entry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

"NoDispScrSavPage"=dword:00000001

[LynnSims]

Thanks...I guess my next question would be, Can I use a policy to set a passworded screen saver for all users on a machine?

[Techguy]

You can grey-out that policy in each users settings (in the system-wide policy) and then define settings for Default user... (*so everyone will be affected by them)

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[scotsmanscott]

On a new workstation the following registry entries should do the trick:

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]

"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="600"
"ScreenSaveActive"="1"
"SCRNSAVE.EXE"="D:\\WINNT\\System32\\ssbezier.scr"
"ScreenSaverIsSecure"="1"

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

"NoDispScrSavPage"=dword:00000001

For existing workstations, the profile solution would probably be necessary.

[LynnSims]

Thanks again Techguy and Scotsmanscott...However, I thought modifying these settings in [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop] would only enforce the screen saver at logon time if no one logged in immediately. I did however try this, but once I was logged in the screen saver never activated. Am I missing something? I set the following in [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop:

"ScreenSaveActive" = "1"
"ScreenSaverIsSec" = "1"
"ScreenSaveTimeOut" = "1"
"SCREENSAVE.EXE" = "C:\WINNT\system32\ssmaze.scr"

I haven't modified the other settings yet, because I want to get this to work first.

[This message has been edited by LynnSims (edited 04-19-2000).]