Hey everyone, I'm facing an issue with some PCs that shouldn't be locking or turning off their displays. I've set up a Group Policy Object (GPO) to turn off the display to 0 for both plugged in and battery modes. Also, in the local security policy options, I've set the 'Interactive logon: machine inactivity limit' to 0 seconds. There are no screensavers enabled, but still, the PCs lock after exactly 15 minutes. Any ideas on what might be causing this? Thanks in advance!
6 Answers
Also, remember to check the default domain policy. It usually supersedes other settings, and if there are power management settings there, they could be the culprit, even if you don't recall seeing them.
You should check your local policy settings. Sometimes, they can conflict with GPOs. Also, if there are any third-party tools managing power or security settings, they could be interfering too. Have you thought about moving the system to an OU with fewer policies, running a 'gpupdate /force', and then moving it back? It's a little tedious but could help pinpoint the problem.
This reminds me of a situation I encountered where a company-wide screensaver policy caused some PCs to lock after just two minutes. What I did was temporarily move those PCs out of their Organizational Unit (OU) to bypass the GPO, manually set the screensaver to 'never', then put them back. It worked! You might want to try a similar approach with your computers to see if it resolves the issue.
You might want to check the results with 'gpresult'. It's possible that there's a conflicting GPO that's overriding your settings. Make sure to run 'rsop' to see what policies are actually applied to the PCs.
I checked both gpresult and rsop; my power management settings from the GPO are being applied correctly.
Try changing the 'turn off the display' setting to the maximum possible value instead of 0. I've encountered bugs where a setting of 0 acts more like a 15-minute timeout in practice. Setting it to the Int32 max value (which is over 60 years!) might just do the trick!
Don't forget to check the screensaver timeout setting, even if it's disabled. Sometimes, the timeout still locks the screen. You could enable a screensaver, set it to 'Never', and then disable it again to ensure it works as expected.
I checked the domain policy, and thankfully, there are no power management settings there.