This is post #3 in my series of boring technolocy articles that can help people. If you would like to see the others, just click on "boring tech stuff" under the labels to the right.
This one deals with overzealous administrators trying to force you to have whatever screensaver they want on whatever time schedule they want, locking out your options to change it. Really annoying if you have a PC that has no mouse or keyboard movement, but has real-time monitoring info that you keep an eye on all day such as CPU or memory of your app servers.
Anyway, if you have XP, to get past this, open Notepad and put this example entry in it. Save it as a .reg file and double-click it. Once completed, right-click on your desktop, choose Properties, look at the screensaver screen and close it. This now changes the low 5 minute screensaver timeout to a whole 8 hours that you don't have to log back in just to see your monitoring stats.
If you open the keys below in the registry you will see an option called "SCRNSAVE.EXE", obviously here you can even change your screensaver as well. Sure, it will overwrite the next time the GPO runs, but you have the simple reg file to change it each time.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="28800"
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1454471165-1960408961-725345543-5403\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveTimeOut"="28800"
The actual HKEY_USERS key may vary from PC to PC, you should check on that first.
Disclaimer #1: You can seriously fuck up your computer if you don't know what you are doing with registry crap. Take a little time to understand before doing and it will pay back in boatloads.
Disclaimer #2: Having your screen on for 8 hrs. straight is a security risk. Co-workers might sneak over and send a message to the entire team from you, stating that you love them all so much you'll bring donuts tomorrow. This risk is assumed.