Friday, August 16, 2013

How to stop a Windows 7 PC from locking


You can stop a Windows 7 PC from locking by changing the following registry key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
Create a new DWORD 32-bit value named DisableLockWorkstation and give it one of these values:• 1 – Disable Lock Workstation• 0 – Enable Lock Workstation

I found when testing this I did not need to restart for this setting to take effect. 

I found out this registry key the hard way when using a Lenovo BIOS update utility. When the Utility is updating the BIOS it locks the keyboard and mouse and also inserts that setting into the registry. However, it did not remove the registry key after the BIOS update. Therefore I was unable to lock my PC until I found out why. 




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