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Change the Screen Saver Grace Period in Windows XP

By Mohammad Yousef | July 2005

Screen saver password protection is a nifty feature of Windows that can be used to make sure no one messes with your stuff if you’re away from the desktop for a while. But let’s say you’re reading this article and suddenly the screen saver is displayed; it can be a bit annoying to be repeatedly asked to type in the password. That is why there’s a hidden setting called the grace period.

If you dismiss the screen saver within the grace period, you won’t be asked for the password. However, the grace period doesn’t appear in the screen saver settings, so the only way to change it without additional software, is a simple registry hack.

Before I start, I must warn you that the registry is a crucial part of your system and messing around with it is dangerous. Although it can’t set off some nuclear reaction, improper use of the registry can severely damage your system. So, I only recommend registry hacks if you’re familiar with the registry or at least able to follow my instructions carefully. If you don’t feel comfortable digging into the registry, you can use Microsoft’s Tweak UI to achieve the same results.

1. Open Registry Editor: Click start | Click Run… | Type regedit | Press Enter

2. Navigate to the following key (if it doesn’t exist, create it): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\Winlogon

3. Look for a string value called ScreenSaverGracePeriod (if it doesn’t exist, create it).

4. Change the value data to the number of seconds you want the grace period to be.

5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.

You’ll probably want to check everything was done properly, but remember, you can’t use the screen saver preview from Display Properties to do that, because you won’t be prompted for a password. You have to wait for a screen saver to appear by itself to see whether the changes have taken effect.