Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Windows 7 – No Logon Screen Saver – Logon.SCR File?

We have a series of Group Policy settings in place that manage the screen saver settings.

The default screensaver at all client locations with the exception of one, as well as ours is the Logon Screen Saver (Logon.SCR).

It seems that the Release Candidate does not have this file:

image

Note the Not Enabled symbol over the Screen Saver icon.

When we click on it, this is what we see in the screen saver settings window:

image

The settings are greyed out as they are managed by GPO. Note the (None) in the Screen saver field.

Hopefully this gets rectified before RTM, or we can copy in the Windows Vista Logon.SCR file to make up for it.

We shall see…

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

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9 comments:

  1. Anonymous17 May, 2009 16:55

    Yes, I also found this out. The Logon screensaver is a nice gadget.
    Is there any Way to modify the Vista Logon.scr with the WIndows 7 logo?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Philip Elder Cluster MVP17 May, 2009 22:25

    A,

    Right now, not that I know of. I have bugged the problem on Connect.

    I do believe that it will be there when the time comes ... at least I hope so!

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous19 August, 2009 21:09

    I have noticed this as well on the RC. When I exit RDC, the login screen just sits there, no screensaver.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous06 September, 2009 22:16

    Still an issue in Windows 7 RTM. Is there a new way to accomplish locking the workstation after being idle?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Philip Elder Cluster MVP06 September, 2009 22:25

    I logged the logon.scr loss on the Windows 7 Partner forums and the answer was "by design".

    Apparently a number of existing screensavers are gone.

    So, what we will be doing is reworking our security groups by adding one for Windows 7 users and configuring an Enforced GPO that sets a Win7 built-in screensaver.

    More to come on that ...

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  6. Babul A. Mukherjee17 September, 2009 02:27

    It looks like you need to specify scrnsave.scr instead of logon.scr now.

    From what I can tell this has existed since Windows 2003.

    Of note is the filesize difference. I would guess this means that memory and cpu usage go down as well.

    Windows 2008
    logon.scr - 5.4MB
    scrnsave.scr - 10K

    Windows 2003
    logon.scr - 498K
    scrnsave.scr - 9K

    My guess is that with LCDs so prevalent now and the need to limit power usage, the days of graphical fun screensavers are behind us. It's best just have the monitor go blank then turn off.

    I'm also all for saving whatever cpu cycles and memory I can, especially when virtualizing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Babul A. Mukherjee17 September, 2009 03:13

    Couldn't paste a picture here so
    I posted details on the GPO needed here

    ReplyDelete
  8. Philip Elder Cluster MVP17 September, 2009 12:08

    Babul,

    It seems that you are right about the commonality of the scrnsave.scr across the operating system line.

    It may take a bit of convincing at this point to switch over, but it may be possible.

    Thanks for the pointers.

    Philip

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous08 October, 2009 16:05

    You can set Windows 7 to work like Windows XP and work on your domain. Go to: http://blogs.technet.com/heyscriptingguy/archive/2006/03/08/how-can-i-configure-the-screensaver-used-when-no-one-is-logged-on-to-a-computer.aspx for instructions. As for the logon.scr do a google search for "Windwos 7" and logon.scr and you will find one to use or go to: http://blogs.technet.com/heyscriptingguy/archive/2006/03/08/how-can-i-configure-the-screensaver-used-when-no-one-is-logged-on-to-a-computer.aspx

    ReplyDelete

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