Screensaver doesn't kick in until user presses key or moves mouse

[Mike_B]

I have recently tried to configure a screensaver on our Win11 catalogs but am running up against an issue where the display doesn't actually switch over to the lock screen.   It remains on whatever was last shown to the user until they walked away, but as soon as they come back and move the mouse or press a key the screen immediately refreshes to the lock screen.

Which is quite annoying - anyone can read what they last had on screen, but as soon as the user comes back, that's no use to them as they immediately have to unlock it.

Any clues as to what might be wrong - how can I force a screen refresh so it updates to the lock screen at the timeout, rather than when the user returns?

[Dennis van der Velde]

We had this issue some time ago, turns out someone had messed with the power setting gpo and removed something what they shouldn't have.

We had the exact same symptoms, have you looked in this direction?

[Mike_B]

8 hours ago, Dennis van der Velde said:

We had this issue some time ago, turns out someone had messed with the power setting gpo and removed something what they shouldn't have.

We had the exact same symptoms, have you looked in this direction?

I don't suppose you remember what it was that got changed?   I don't think we have power settings wrong (full power all the time) but happy to check if there are other, better settings.

[Dennis van der Velde]

On 3/5/2024 at 8:41 PM, Michael Burnstead1709159565 said:

I don't suppose you remember what it was that got changed?   I don't think we have power settings wrong (full power all the time) but happy to check if there are other, better settings.

The problem was that this coworker moved some settings to a different GPO, so a whole bunch of settings got put back to not configured and behaved differently.

I looked up the initial change and this was about turning the display off after x second when connected to a the net or a battery. (so i guess the affected setting was in the same area)

[Paul Thews]

I had the same screen lock error on Windows 11 for a long time. I finally fixed it after adjusting the power options for turn off screen to never on the master. There it was set to 15 minutes after which the screen should turn off. This incorrect setting caused the screen to freeze and after moving the mouse the screen lock appeared.

[Mike_B]

It worked!   Thanks Paul (and Dennis).   That was indeed the issue, just the monitor power saving setting in the master image.

Took me a while to apply it due to maintenance windows, but all seems to work OK now.  :)