While in office you may move around to different desks and cubicles. Most of the time you may think you will return to your desk in a minute or two but end up only after an hour or so. In the mean time your PC and data may be at risk if you have not locked your computer. So it’s better to set up an automatic lock on your computer after few minutes of inactivity.
First, what is the shortcut to lock the computer?
I have seen many people fighting hard to lock the computer as they first press ‘alt + ctrl + del’ and then they click ‘Lock this computer’. But windows key combination is a much simpler keyboard shortcut, just press ‘Windows Key + L’ to lock your computer. (Learn how to increase efficiency with keyboard shortcuts)
How to set up the computer to lock automatically?
If you don’t have the habit of locking your PC manually then I seriously advise you to follow this.
Windows has password protect option in screen savers. If you have enabled that, the system would automatically lock itself as soon as the screen saver comes up. On resume, you will be asked for the password before you can enter.
1) Right click on the desktop -> Personalize -> Screen Saver.
2) If you are using Vista, check the box which says ‘On resume, display logon screen‘ or else in Windows XP this would be ‘On resume, password protect‘.
3) Save and close. Next time you move out of your PC it will lock itself after the time you have mentioned in the screen saver settings.
Update: If you are not used to keyboard shortcuts, you can create a custom desktop shortcut to lock your PC
The screen saver password is useless by itself. Simply manually restart the computer (ie pull plug/hold the power button) and voila.
@Tensore, Valid point…but I was talking in an office scenario…The screen saver password is not a different password…Its the same as you logging in to your network again…even if you restart, you have to login again to the network…
my pc is locked i can open it i forgot the password is there any idea or way to open that…………………….
you can also make a shortcut with target %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
right click>>new>>shortcut>>and then type in the above address >>name shortcut ‘Lock Computer’
whenever you want to lock your computer just double click
How to lock my pc when restart and my bios…
there is a way to get pass the initial logon screen, if they did not set a password during the installation of Windows XP os then u should be able to press ctrl alt delete until a box appears, type in Administrator in user name field, and leave the password blank, this will only work if there is not a password on it, so i strongly advise you to go to Start|Run, and type in Control Userpasswords2, if you type that correctly i box should open up, click advanced, then advance again, you’ll see a list like
Local Users and Groups (local)
go to Users in that list, you’ll then see on the right side of the program a few usernames, right click Administrator, and click set password, and that should protect you…
Hi, a couple of days ago I set my vista to automatically lock my computer after around 30 mins if no input is detected. Of course now that I want to watch a movie it gets really annoying. Now it is behaving strangely for every 5 Min it is getting lock.
It figures that I forgot how I turned it on lol. Would someone mind telling me how to turn it back off?
When I chck with screen saver, there is a 5Min screen settings but is was de-activated.
thank you
i prefer to look forward for simple screensaver password. compared that windows password. if anything goes wrong, we’ll lose all the documents. likewise, if use a simple password, all we need is just uninstall the application. easy.