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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Windows 7 SDK Installation Failure

Issue: 

When installing the Windows 7 SDK the install fails and rolls back the installation before showing a failure message

You find this in the log file

SFX C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Setup\SFX\vcredist_x64.exe installation started with log file C:\Users\qjwp\AppData\Local\Temp\Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7_0f8d776d-1dab-4e38-b30f-ff0140db5234_SFX.log

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Setup\SFX\vcredist_x64.exe installation failed with return code 5100

Fix: 

Uninstall visual C++ 2010 Resdistributable  2010 ( both X86 and X64 Versions). Then attempt the install again. 

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