How do I disable automatic locking of computer?

L

lleiderm

New Member
My Vista home premium automatically locks after a short time. This is super annoying. I want to turn it off. My screen saver used to come on, but now it locks instead. I am using the Webshots screen saver, and it does not have anything on it for setting a password, so I cannot set that, as was suggested in another forum.

Isn't there some way to simply tell windows to NOT automatically lock my computer, EVER?

Lloyd
 

My Computer

System One

hello lloyd and welcome to the Forums,:party:

This setting is buried in the advanced power settings

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/102686-password-protection-wakeup.html

Control panel
system
power options
change plan settings
change advanced power settings
additional settings
require password on wakeup

if you change power plans often you may want to change this on all plans you use.

you may also want to set the blank screen time-out to something more suitable for your usage

hope this helps
 

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Thanks so much for both of these replies. I appreciate your help!

BUT..........

Neither of them addresses the problem I am having.

I had already set my power options as was suggested to not require a password when waking up. I checked, and it is still set that way.

But, here's the thing: the computer is not asleep re this problem I am having. It is locked. When it is asleep, the screen goes black, and most everything is shut down, and power is at an absolute minimum.

But for my concern, it has the green and teal windows curtain for the background and my picture showing for my account. I just have to click on my account picture, and I am right back where I was. It s the same result as what happens if I click on the lock icon at the bottom of the start menu. It is super, super annoying to have to relogin every few minutes.

My screen saver was working fine until today when this started happening.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the "bug" involved has to do with the fact that I used a program called "Bulent's Screen Recorder" which allows me to create an AVI file from streaming video. When it is in operation it disables the screen saver so it doesn't mess up your recording. There was a lecture I recorded, and I can't necessarily blame it on that program, but it is suspect for the following reason:

I read somewhere that the Microsoft screen saver by default automatically locks your computer after some time. Now, I am not using the Microsoft screen saver. But my shot-in-the-dark explanation is that this that maybe the video capture program re-enables the screen saver after it finishes. And maybe it does it generically, such that the internal windows message/command it sends also enables the automatic locking associated with Microsoft screen savers. But since I am not using an MS screen saver, I can't turn it off. I went into the control panel for the screen saver I use, and there is nothing there concerning locking the computer for me to change.

So, now I just went into the control panel app to tell it to use <none> for my screen saver, to try to turn off the auto locking. Then I went into my Webshots app and told it to activate its screen saver.

Now I am going to sit around for 5-10 minutes and see if the computer locks again or if the screen saver starts working again. Should be interesting!

I'll let you know.

Lloyd
 

My Computer

System One

Lloyd,
Are you trying to say "Freezing" ?
There's a big difference between "Lock" and "Freeze".

If it Freezes, how do you get out of it?

Just curious!

:cool:
 

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Since when has this occured? Might I get some info please.

Was this since you got the computer?
 

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Okay guys,

I don't want to, but I guess I just MUST take a bow.

I figured it out!!!!!!!!!!!!

The screen saver came back again after setting it to <none> and then reactivating the Webshots screen saver.

So then I wanted to really test it to see if I could duplicate the problem and fix it again.

So I brought up the streaming video page; fired up the BSR screen video capture program; ended that capture; and waited.

WOW! Lo and behold, it locked again, instead of having the screen saver come on. So I showed that the cause of the locking is the video capture program, probably because of the faulty wrapup commands it sends to Windows to reactivate the screen saver.

Then I got lazy, and decided to not bother going into control panel to deactivate the screen saver. Instead, I just went into my Webshots screen saver and deactivated it there. Then I re-activated it so it would bat Microsoft away and take command of idle time processing again.

And it worked. The screen saver came on again instead of the locking.

So now I have a work around. I know that if I use BSR video capture, I need to go into my Webshots screen saver and deactivate it and re-activate it.

Now all I need to do is email the BSR Recorder Video team and let them know about their buggy screen saver wrapup routine.

Fun, fun, fun and I didn't even have to wait until my daddy took my T-Bird away,
Lloyd
 

My Computer

System One

Yes, I know this thread is old.

For anyone looking for solutions to this problem that did not find the solution above to be helpful, I believe I have a solution for you. The problem as described above IS with the screen saver settings. For some reason Vista is not dumping the MS Vista screen saver settings (for time and password requirements) after they are changed. So if you switch to a screen saver without the options given in the screen saver control panel (such as choosing "(None)") then your computer defaults to the previous screen saver's options.

For example: I had my screen saver set to: Blank, to come on in 5 minutes, and "On resume, display logon screen" was active. It worked correctly. Then I switched to "(None)" for my screen saver which blanked out BOTH options for time and logon screen. Then, like clockwork, every 5 minutes of inactive time I would see the logon screen pop up without a screen saver.

Solution: Switch back to a screen saver (such as Blank). Turn up the time for screen saver to become active (I used 9999). Turn off the check mark beside "On resume, display logon screen". Click "Apply". Then switch back to any screen saver you desire.

You should no longer be plagued by that annoying constant logon screen popping up while you are watching YouTube videos, making dinner while listening to Pandora, or whatever it was that brought you here.
 

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one85db,
I just want to say, "Thanks!" I have spent several evenings and more than a few hours trying to figure out the solution to the problem of the reappearing autolock/welcome login screen, which made streaming netflix an extremely annoying experience. I had set my screen saver and sleep settings to "never" and no password required for logging in or after waking up, thinking these were appropriate for watching movies (after all "never" was on the menu of choices for settings!). The result was having the welcome screen pop up every 10min. I searched many threads trying to figure out what I did wrong or the appropriate settings needed to make this problem go away. (Maybe there is, but it wasn't using "never" settings and unchecking no password required for login or after sleep mode.) Your post made it clear; there wasn't a "legit" solution when using "never" settings (that I could find, anyway); what was needed was the "work around" solution you provided: use blank screen saver and use 9999 min time out. I thank you.

You would think MS would've figured when programming vista that if a user selects "never" settings for screensaver & sleep, they don't want the freakin' welcome/login screen popping up every 10 min! Go fig. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you!

one85db said:
Yes, I know this thread is old.

For anyone looking for solutions to this problem that did not find the solution above to be helpful, I believe I have a solution for you. The problem as described above IS with the screen saver settings. For some reason Vista is not dumping the MS Vista screen saver settings (for time and password requirements) after they are changed. So if you switch to a screen saver without the options given in the screen saver control panel (such as choosing "(None)") then your computer defaults to the previous screen saver's options.

For example: I had my screen saver set to: Blank, to come on in 5 minutes, and "On resume, display logon screen" was active. It worked correctly. Then I switched to "(None)" for my screen saver which blanked out BOTH options for time and logon screen. Then, like clockwork, every 5 minutes of inactive time I would see the logon screen pop up without a screen saver.

Solution: Switch back to a screen saver (such as Blank). Turn up the time for screen saver to become active (I used 9999). Turn off the check mark beside "On resume, display logon screen". Click "Apply". Then switch back to any screen saver you desire.

You should no longer be plagued by that annoying constant logon screen popping up while you are watching YouTube videos, making dinner while listening to Pandora, or whatever it was that brought you here.
Click to expand...
 

My Computer

System One

Trying all of the above suggestions did not work, but this did: in Control Panel, select Mobile PC, then Personalization, then Screen Saver. To the right of "Wait"and number of minutes, uncheck to box that says "On resume, display log on screen". It took me months to find this, but I finally did and the lock screen no longer shows up when waking up from either the screen saver or sleep. Hope this helps. (If anybody out there is still running Vista!)
 

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    dell
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