lock screen appearing after 15 seconds of inactivity

Question

_{Wednesday, May 8, 2019 11:59 PM}

So this issue has become increasing frustrating for our end users. After no apparent changes were made random users started reporting that the computer they use would go into screen saver then lock. We have a group policy enabled that keeps the screen saver turned off. We've never needed to change that policy and it's worked just fine - until about a month ago.

We use SCCM to deploy software packages and Windows Updates. We recently pushed a new software title to our school computers and reports started trickling in about computers locking out after 15 seconds (I timed it when I went to troubleshoot). 15 seconds isn't even an option in the power/sleep or screen saver settings. 

We found that deleting the user profile from the computer appears to "solve" the problem. But that doesn't help us identify the cause. 

In an effort to narrow down possible causes, we made one change in the policy that - at the time - seemed to solve the issue. But our SCCM pushed out a new round of updates yesterday and today we had a few more reports of the 15 second lockout.

This is happening across different hardware platforms too. It's happening to random users and does not seem to be following any pattern which has made this issue extremely difficult to fix.

I've checked error logs, hardware and software differences, changed power/sleep settings and screen saver settings locally and nothing fixes the problem. Only deleting the user profile seems to "fix" it, but again, that's not helping us identify where the problem is coming from.

We are running Windows 10  64-bit (OS build 16299.1029)

All replies (4)

_{Thursday, May 9, 2019 4:23 AM}

I had a similar situation on my stand-alone machine where the computer would lock within a minute or two, even though power options were set to oone hour. Setting a screensaver remidied the problem. But when I went to set one, I noticed the timeout value seemd to coincide with how quickly my computer locked. So, even though screensavers are disabled by group policy, check the value named ScreenSaveTimeOut under:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

ScreenSaveTimeOut is a DWORD with the time expressed in seconds.

Keith

_{Thursday, May 9, 2019 6:26 AM}

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft TechNet Forum.

Based on your description, please try the following methods which may help:

1. Try to uninstall the round of updates and check if the problem was solved.

2. Add Timeout Setting to Power Options by Editing the Registry Manually in the article.

3. Check if these options was enabled in the following link:

https://blog.encyro.com/how-to-force-windows-10-to-lock-itself-after-inactivity-for-all-users/

Note: This is a third-party link and we do not have any guarantees on this website. This is just for your convenience. And Microsoft does not make any guarantees about the content.

Best regards,

Hurry

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_{Sunday, May 12, 2019 1:13 PM}

Hi,
How things are going there on this issue?
Please let me know if you would like further assistance.

Best regards,

Hurry

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_{Tuesday, May 14, 2019 1:07 AM}

Hi,

Is there anything else I can do to help you on this issue?

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Hurry

Please remember to mark the reply as an answer if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected]