Disable Screen Saver for Remote Sessions Only

I work from home, but I'm also in the office quite often. My work and home machines are both Windows 7 Ultimate.

When I'm in the office I like my computer to go to screen saver fairly quickly and then lock ("On resume, display logon screen").

But when I'm home, I often do something on my home computer for a good length of time, and I don't want the remote session to lock and require a password when I switch back over to it.

I'm looking for a (Group Policy?) setting that can turn off the screen saver only for remote sessions. Is this possible?

I was able to accomplish this with TaskScheduler and Windows Event Viewer logging.

You will need 2 batch scripts. One to disable the checkbox to require password on screensaver unlock and another to re-enable it when your RDP session is over.

Disable script:

reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop" /f /v ScreenSaverIsSecure /t REG_SZ /d 0

Enable script:

reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop" /f /v ScreenSaverIsSecure /t REG_SZ /d 1

Have your disable event trigger on Event ID 1149 under TerminalServices-LocalSessionManager

Have your re-enable event trigger on Event ID 24, same place.

TaskScheduler example

Enjoy!

You could make shortcuts to enable/disable your screensaver. I know it's not ideal, but this solution can be done in a few seconds instead of banging your head trying to figure out something automated. That said, if someone more knowledgeable than me can find a way to have a login script only run on remote logon/logoff, then you're set :)

Create a file disable-screensaver.reg with this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveActive"="0"

Then create a shortcut to regedit.exe /s disable-screensaver.reg. The enable shortcut is the same but with "ScreenSaveActive"="1" instead of 0.