Windows – How to Prevent a Policy-Enforced Screen Lock in Windows

screensaversecurity-policywindows

Our corporate BOFH imposes the screen lock setting with a ridiculously short delay. It's frustrating and counterproductive.

Is there a way to prevent the automatic screen lock? I would assume there is no way to override the policy-enforced setting, but maybe there is a software that mimics user activity.

Just asking before I set up a perpetual mouse wheel. (get it?)

Best Answer

Yet another option is freeware Caffeine program. It is free for commercial use as well. From the program's homepage:

If you have problems with your PC locking or going to sleep, caffeine will keep it awake. It works by simulating a key-press once every 59 seconds, so your machine thinks you're still working at the keyboard, so won't lock the screen or activate the screensaver.

Caffeine works by simulating an F15 key up event every 59 seconds. Of all the key presses available, F15 is probably the least intrusive (I've never seen a PC keyboard with that key!), and least likely to interfere with your work.

This off-the-shelf solution also allows you to control when to enable it and disable it:

Double-clicking the program icon empties the coffee pot, which is what the icon represents, and temporarily disables the program. Double-clicking it again refills the pot, and will keep your machine awake.

Related Solutions

Windows 7 – Disable Lock Workstation After 10 Minutes Using Group Policy

To disable Lock:

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE \Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, create a new DWORD value named DisableLockWorkstation and set value to 1.

Then restart the computer.

KDE screen lock log

Use D-Bus to get lockscreen's actived/deactived signals. The name of the screen saver service will vary from system to system. In general, KDE uses org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver and Gnome uses org.gnome.ScreenSaver. This cannot be relied upon though, for example, Mint uses org.cinnamon.ScreenSaver.

Helpful Commands

These assume that your screen saver is org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver and your DBus service is org.freedesktop.DBus. You may need to adjust this for other systems. Use the following information to find out what your system uses:

To get a list of the dbus services available in your current session, use:
```
dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus --type=method_call --print-reply /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames
```
Add |grep screensaver to the end if you just want the screen saver services available.
To get a list of the commands supported by your screen saver service, use:
```
qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver
```

To invoke a command, use:

dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver --type=method_call --print-reply --reply-timeout=20000 /org/freedesktop/ScreenSaver org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SetActive boolean:true

Where SetActive was listed in the list of supported commands and takes a boolean value.

To monitor a service:

dbus-monitor --session "type='signal',interface='org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver'"

Automation

Now that you understand how your system works, you can use a python script to log this activity into a file:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import os
import pwd
import subprocess
import time

LOG_FILE = os.path.expanduser('~/hours_log.csv')


cmd = subprocess.Popen(["dbus-monitor \"type='signal',interface="
                        "'org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver'\""], shell=True,
                       stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

running = 0
while 1:
    time.sleep(0.1)
    if running:
        output = cmd.stdout.readline()
        status = 'unlocked' if 'true' in output else 'locked'
        new_line = "{time} {user} {status} the screen\n".format(
            time=datetime.now().ctime(),
            user=pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid())[0],
            status=status
        )
        with open(LOG_FILE, 'a') as f:
            f.write(new_line)

        running = 0
    line = cmd.stdout.readline()
    if "ActiveChange" in line and 'org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver' in line:
        running = 1

[ Source: logging-lock-screen-events ]

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows 7 – Disable Lock Workstation After 10 Minutes Using Group Policy

KDE screen lock log

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