7/8/10

Lock screen & start screensaver

Sounds like a simple task doesn’t it?  For years I have just pressed the Windows key + L and locked my computer.  But, like any proud father, I didn’t want to wait 15 minutes for the photo’s of my kids to start scrolling across my dual monitors (a great free photo screen saver for dual monitors is gPhotoShow.com). All I wanted to do was lock my computer and start my screen saver at the same time. After all, even OS X can do that with Exposé. To my surprise, there is no built in method to do that in Windows!  Even if you make a shortcut to the screen saver, when you move the mouse, it goes right back to your desktop.  So after some searching on different scripts, I came across a free app someone wrote that does the trick.  Download sslaunch.zip from this WindowsITPro.com article, extract it, and move the SaveScrn.exe file to your desktop. Now, all you have to do is double click it and your computer will lock and display your screensaver.

Enjoy!