Screen Saver Killer

Introduction

Some businesses enforce a corporate policy whereby your screensaver is set globally and is locked down so that you can’t change the settings.

In a whole bunch of scenarios, this is the last thing you want. Here are a few examples:

  • During a presentation consisting of a video, the screen saver will activate after the period defined by your IT department
  • On the big screens they put up on walls to show corporate messages/stats/etc you don’t want the screen saver activating when these screens are driven by a PC which is logged into a user account.
  • You’re not working on your laptop, but have the screen open so that you can keep an eye on your inbox, or a system monitor tool. If the screen saver kicks in every 10 minutes it can get very tedious unlocking the thing each time >:-(

Feature Summary

Screen Saver Killer is a very simple app that will give you back control over your screen saver settings. It deletes a few entries from the registry (these usually enforce the security policy & grey out the dialog options). It then sets the registry entries corresponding to your screen saver settings. And finally does an API call to tell Windows to deactivate the screen saver.

When you run the .exe it will display a message in the centre of the screen for 2 seconds and then automatically shut down. It’s designed this way so you can fire it off from a script.

Whether this works on PCs logged in with no Administrator privileges remains to be seen. Let me know how you get on.

Downloads (for Windows 9x/NT4/200x/XP)

Download the zipped EXE (5k)
VB6 Runtimes for anyone who doesn’t already have them installed

License

Screen Saver Killer is freeware, but if you find it useful, a small donation via PayPal (no matter how small) would really make my day.

Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!

Legal

Disclaimer : A user of this software acknowledges that he or she is receiving this software on an “as is” basis and the user is not relying on the accuracy or functionality of the software for any purpose. The user further acknowledges that any use of this software will be at the user’s own risk and the copyright owner accepts no responsibility whatsoever arising from the use or application of the software.

3 thoughts on “Screen Saver Killer”

  1. I might try your Screen Saver Killer as the screen saver imposed at our college affects my teaching. It’s intended to stop students interfering with my account if I leave the room but, like all these things, it’s a poor compromise. Too short and it interrupts teaching, too long and it provides very weak security.

    Thanks anyway, Chris

  2. You can use Screen Saver Killer once, and it’ll give you back control of the screen saver settings (the policy disables things like the timeout, etc). That’ll let you turn the screen saver on (giving you back the security), but let you put a longer timeout on it (making it more practical).

  3. Pingback: Personal page.

Leave a comment