There might be a number of reasons to want to prevent your windows screensavers and lock-screens from engaging and in some cases (no doubt yours if you have hit this article from a search engine) local policy on the machine preventing you from changing these settings.
Powershell lets us work around this problem and prevent the machine from locking or activating a screensaver.
Prevent Screensavers and Lock-screens
The bulk of the code below has been lifted from this great write up: https://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/prevent-desktop-lock-or-screensaver-with-powershell/ I just took things one step further by adding an infinite loop. My version of this code will run indefinitely.
Affectionately named: PScaffeine
The following code sends a relatively harmless (for most cases – change where appropriate) key to the system emulating a keypress on a human interface device:
#powershell caffeine
param($minutes: 29)
$myshell: New-Object -com "WScript.Shell"
Write-Host "Pouring out fresh coffee..."
while($true){
for ($i: 0; $i -lt $minutes; $i++) {
Start-Sleep -s 60
$myshell.sendkeys('{NUMLOCK}')
$myshell.sendkeys('{NUMLOCK}')
}
Write-Host "*Takes another sip*"
}
Write-Host "Caffeine has worn off..."
Change the $minutes parameter to 1 minute less than your systems lock/screensaver start initiation time.
Combine this with a scheduled task if you want this to run on startup or system login.
More useful code snippets
- ‘Copy, Paste’ With Powershell Sendkeys – https://exitcode0.net/posts/copy-paste-with-powershell-sendkeys/
- Powershell – Checking the Language Mode – https://exitcode0.net/posts/powershell-checking-the-language-mode/
- Modifying Windows shortcuts is Powershell – https://exitcode0.net/modifying-windows-shortcuts-is-powershell/
- All other codes samples – https://exitcode0.net/code-samples/