Question : Reset Screen Saver Group Policy - Server 2008

Hello Everyone,

   I have a small network on which various Group Policies are enforced to provide for specific security and functionality settings. One of these settings is that the screen saver should be enabled, and lock the workstation after 30 minutes. This works beautifully on all of our machines, and causes the options in the Screen Saver tab of the Display Settings to be greyed out. I have one machine that I would like to have allowed to change the screen saver options in this tab. I've placed it in its own OU and block policy inheritance, linking only the policies that don't enforce the screen saver settings.

   Despite there no longer being an enforced policy regarding screen saver settings for this machine, the settings in the Screen Saver tab remain greyed out. Is there a way to reset the Group Policy settings on this particular Server 2008 machine, or at least re-enable the Screen Saver configuration options? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Best Regards,
Martin Schultz

Answer : Reset Screen Saver Group Policy - Server 2008

The screensaver settings are set in the 'User Configuration' section of a GPO, and therefore apply to the User objects in the domain, not the computer objects. Moving the computer object around and blocking inheritence to that object will have no effect, since it is the user account which is logging in which the policy is applying to.

The only way you can work around this is to move the users who will need the ability to change Screen Saver settings into their own OU out of scope of the GPO (either Block Inheritance or adjust your OU structure so they don't inherit the OU). This will, however, give them access to change their screen saver wherever they go.

The other approach in some cases would be to disable the restriction just on this one server by creating a new GPO on the server's OU, overriding the screen saver settings to 'Disabled' and then enabling Loopback. The problem here is this will simply do the opposite and turn off the screen saver; it won't enable you to unlock the settings so changes can be made.

-Matt