Are you seeing the Screen Saver settings appears to be greyed out on the Windows 11 settings page? Usually, system administrators tend to disable these personalization features on the domain computers so that the users can’t enable the screensaver. So, follow these easy tips to enable the Screen Saver on your computer. Even if you are using a Home version of Windows, you can do it.
Fix 1 – Using the Registry Editor
This Registry Editor hack can be done on any Windows 11 or 10 device. So, follow the steps very minutely to enable the Screen Saver again.
1. Click once on the “Search” button and type “regedit“.
2. Then, tap “Registry Editor” in the search results to open that.
NOTE – Registry Editor is one of the key parts of your computer. A single wrong value change can cause a fatal error and your computer may never boot up again! So, build a registry backup before you proceed further.
a. At first, click on “File” from the menu bar.
b. Later, tap “Export” to make a new registry backup.
3. Go to this key position along this way –
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop
4. Now, look on the right-hand pane and see if you can find the “ScreenSaveActive” string value.
5. Then, right-click the string value and tap “Delete” to remove it from your system.
6. When you are asked Are you want to permanently delete this value? prompt, tap “Yes” to remove it from your system.
7. Apart from this particular value, if you can see any of these values, Delete all of those.
SCRNSAVE.EXE ScreenSaverIsSecure ScreenSaveTimeout
After removing the value associated with the screen saver, close the Registry Editor. Then, you have to restart your Windows 11/10 machine once.
As your system boots up, it will re-enable the screen-saver options.
Fix 2 – Enable the Group Policy feature
As we have talked about earlier on this, your system administrator can actually impose a policy to block the screen-saver settings on your computer. So, you can disable this policy to get back the screen savers again.
1. At first, press the Win key and the R keys together.
2. Then, type this in the Run box and hit Enter.
gpedit.msc
3. When you have Local Group Policy Editor opened up on your computer, get to this point –
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization
4. Here, you can view all the group policies on the right-hand pane.
5. There, look for the “Enable screen saver” policy. Double-tap that to edit it.
6. Now, choose the “Not configured” policy setting.
7. Then, click once on “Apply” and then “OK” to save the changes.
8. Coming back to the Local Group page, look for the “Password protect the screen saver” policy. When you have found that, double-tap it.
9. Just, set this policy to the “Not configured” setting as well.
10. After that, tap “Apply” and “OK“.
After all of these tasks, close the Local Group Policy screen. Then, restart your system. After you have restarted the system, you can easily enable any screen savers you want.