XP Login Screen saver

It seemed like such an easy task when I started doing it.

Take a powerpoint slideshow and display it before the user logins in, on our workstations.

I wanted to display revision notes on our XP workstations in the Business ICT suites, when they were sitting unused.

I settled on exporting the slides as JPGs and using a photo screensaver to display a folder. I started with a GPO delivered from our server but this only allowed me to force the user screensaver to the ssmypics.scr, which then displayed the users My Pictures folder. It was a disaster, all the kids downloaded images started popping up at random during lessons. I scrapped that and took to the net, a lot of the sites recommended redirecting the “My Pictures” to a single network share, not my preferred choice in a school.

Two sites were very useful and slowly a solution began to present itself.

1. Set up the screen saver on a workstation, export the registry and import it into the target.  For 80 machines this was going to be a pain so I needed another plan.
2. This site was useful but appear to be using server 2008 which I don’t have, but an idea took hold.

My solution

1. I created a folder on my workstation called c:\ss and added the pictures I wanted to use. I decided to create a batch file that an admin could use to push out the files rather than use the GPO to copy them. I figured this would lessen the load on the network as the files would only be pushed out as required rather than at each machine boot. However, if you know another way please let me know. Here is a copy of all the  Scripts I used. You run ICTDIST, this then causes 80 copies of copy2machine to run and push the files out to the machines.
2. I used my workstation to create and edit a .REG file that could be imported in the work stations.
3. I created a GPO called Screensaver – ICT on the server. Disabled the user configuration settings and created a startup script. I clicked on show files and dragged in the .reg file. Then clicked add and entered “regedit” in the script name and ” /s screensaver.reg” in the parameters.
4. All machines had a gpupdate performed on the and rebooted.
5. The screen saver was then observed working on the machines 🙂

Any time we want to change the images we just update them and the admin pushes out the changes. I guess other departments will want to use this at some point. If they do we can create a SS folder in their subject areas and use the GPO to copy the right graphics files across at machine boot.

Anyway I hope this helps someone, feel free to leave a comment I will answer ASAP.