Is there a way to quickly turn on my screen saver with a password whenever I want to leave my desk?
-Sharon
This question was answered on August 7, 2000. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.
Anyone that works in an open area has had to deal with the “prying eyes” of others In order to quickly secure the desktop, many people purchase third-party programs that provide this service, but there is a “free” alternative.
The first step is to put a password into the settings for your screen saver To do this, click on Start/Settings/Control Panel then double-click on the Display icon to open the “Display Properties” dialog box Click on the “Screen Saver” tab at the top to access the options Select the screen saver of your choice (we’ll use “Flying Windows” in this example) and then place a checkmark in the “Password protected” box Next, click on the “Change…” button to set your screen saver password Once you have typed in your password, click on Ok until all the windows are closed From this point on, whenever your screen saver activates, the password must be used to regain access to the system Since the shortest “inactivity” time that will automatically activate the screen saver is one minute, there are a couple of additional steps to take to complete our task
In order to make it possible to immediately activate the screen saver, creating a “shortcut” to it is necessary Screen saver files generally reside in the C:\Windows\System folder and have a file extension of “scr” To get a quick list of all of your screen savers, use the Find command to list all *.scr files Click on Start/Find/Files or Folders to open the “Find: All Files” dialog box Type *.scr in the “Named:” box, make sure that C: drive is in the “Look in:” box and make sure the box in front of “Include subfolders” is checked, then press the “Find Now” button This will list all files that are located on your C: drive with the *.scr extension (Not all *.scr files are actually screen saver files, so be sure to only select those that reside in the C:\Windows\System folder!) Since we chose “Flying Windows earlier, locate it in the list then right-click (very important) and drag it out to your Desktop When you release the mouse button, a dialog box with four options will appear Select “Create shortcut(s) here” and an icon should appear with the name of your selection If you left-click and drag the icon from the Find box, it will actually move it from its proper location, so be sure to right-click and drag.
Once you have created the shortcut on your Desktop, simply double-click it anytime that you want to leave your desk and your information will be password protected until you come back If you want to assign a keyboard shortcut to the icon, simply right-click on it, then choose “Properties” to show the shortcut options Click inside the “Shortcut key:” box then choose a keystroke combination (such as Ctrl + Alt + S) to assign to the item Now you can also press that key combination from within any program to activate your password enabled screen saver!
About the author
Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on August 7, 2000
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