Windows – Screen (not Lock Screen) Timeout Stuck at 1 Minute

lockscreensavertimeoutwindowswindows-registry

I recently got a new laptop (Lenovo T440p with Windows 8.1 Pro) and was having the following issue: the screen would lock (screen would go black and require a password to get back in) after 1 minute. I would prefer something more like 10 or 15 minutes. So, I tried the obvious changes (check the screensaver settings, power management settings for sleep, turning off the screen, etc.), with no success. I did, however, notice a rather odd behavior: if I changed the screensaver timeout from 1 minute to anything else (say, 15 mins), clicked OK, and re-opened the screensaver settings window, it would be back to 1 minute. Odd.

At that point, I turned to Google. I found posts (this one in particular was helpful) suggesting all sorts of causes and resolutions:

  • If you have Cisco AnyConnect VPN client (which I did), try uninstalling it. I uninstalled, rebooted, no change.
  • Open the User Accounts control panel and, on the left side of the screen, click Reset Security Policies. My User Accounts control panel, however, has no such link.
  • Reboot into a repair console and run "sfc /scannow". It did indeed find and repair some issues, but didn't fix the screen timeout problem.
  • Edit the Group Policy to force a particular timeout time; the setting showed up correctly (15 mins) in screensaver settings, power management settings, etc., but the screen would still go black and lock after 1 minute.
  • In the registry, manually change the screensaver timeout and the "turn off the screen" timeout. No luck.

Best Answer

In the end, I had to dig through the output from Process Monitor to see what other settings might be getting set (by who-knows-what) when I changed my screensaver settings. I found a registry key I haven't seen before: 

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\InactivityTimeoutSecs

It was set to 60 (seconds). I updated it to 900 (15 minutes), and it worked!

I still don't know how that got set in the first place, or why my screensaver timeout kept reverting to 1 minute (it doesn't anymore, since I changed that registry key), but if you have any ideas to help explain it, I'm all ears (or eyes, I suppose). Still, since this caused me so much time and frustration, I wanted to post what finally worked in case it can help someone else.

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