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How to deploy screen saver using Group Policy (GPO) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

How to deploy screen saver using Group Policy (GPO) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

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How to deploy screen saver using Group Policy (GPO) or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

For group deployment you should create single .scr file by following the steps below:

  1. Click “Create” button, which opens “Select Screen Saver File Name” dialog
  2. In “Save as type” drop-down box select “Screen Saver (*.scr)”
  3. Choose folder and enter file name. The best thing would be to use file name with less or equal to 8 characters, e.g. “mysaver.scr”.
  4. Click “Save”
  5. Click “Open Folder”
  6. Double-click screen saver file to verify if such screen saver works.

Created .scr file should be copied to appropriate System folder on every client, depending on OS version:

  • On Windows 64-bit, it should be placed in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder
  • On Windows 32-bit, it should be placed in C:\Windows\System32 folder

Regarding Group Policy settings, start with a Group Policy Object (GPO) that is linked to the Organizational Unit (OU) where your user accounts are located in Active Directory. This can be either a new GPO or an existing GPO that may already have other settings you want applied to all of your users. Next, go to Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization:

  1. Enable “Enable Screen Saver” policy
  2. Enable “Force Specific Screen Saver” policy and for “Screen saver executable name” set full path to short (8.3) filename of screen saver, e.g. %Systemroot%\SysWOW64\mysaver.scr
  3. Enable “Screen Saver timeout” policy and set “Number of seconds to wait to enable the screen saver” to desired number of seconds, e.g. 300 for 5 minutes

This policy change will update during a regular Group Policy refresh cycle. From the user’s perspective, the options for setting the screen saver will be set and grayed out.

Be mindful that this is a user setting, not a computer setting. If you’re applying this to a computer, nothing is going to happen unless you’re using loopback policy to apply the setting to all users logging into the computer.

Further reading:

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