Disable screensaver whilst playing slideshows in Powerpoint 2010

[Ric_]

I've given a couple of teachers Office 2010 to play with and I've only had one complaint! The screensaver comes on when they are playing powerpoint presentations.

I thought there was a way to stop this happening within PowerPoint itself but it seems there is not - although every other aspect of the playing process can be changed!

Ideas people?

(btw - screensaver is controlled via GPO and I don't want to disable it completely)

[EduTech]

As Per MSN Convo

Lenovo Support & downloads - Presentation Director for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 - Notebooks > Might Help

James.

[JoeBubbles]

Download the attachment and rename it to *.vbs. I created a shortcut to this script on my desktop and named it "Slideshow Stay Awake". Simply drag-and-drop your presentation or slide show onto the shortcut, the script will do the rest. (It won't touch your screensaver or GPO settings at all.)

[JoeBubbles]

Edugeek's attachment upload function seems to be broken. Here's the content of the attachment I tried to upload:

'================================================= ==============================
'
' Program : Slideshow.vbs
' Version : 1.0
' Created : 7-Apr-2010
' Author/s : Joe Bubbles
'
' Purpose : Drag and drop a PowerPoint slideshow onto this program icon, it
' will then launch the slideshow and emulate a keystroke at
' predetermined intervals to avoid the screensaver activating, thus
' by-passing the screensaver password protection (if enabled).
'
'================================================= ==============================
Option Explicit

Const Keypress_Interval = 10 '(seconds)

CheckHost
KeepBusy Slideshow

'_________________________________________________ ______________________________

Function KeepBusy(Presentation)
Dim objSHL, objEXE

Const CommandLine = "cmd /C start ""Slideshow"" /realtime /wait "

Set objSHL = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objEXE = objSHL.Exec(CommandLine & """" & Presentation & """")

DisplayHelp

Do While objEXE.Status = 0 '(Still Running)
objSHL.SendKeys "+" '(SHIFT, harmless during presentations)
Wscript.Sleep Keypress_Interval * 1000
Loop

End Function 'KeepBusy
'_________________________________________________ ______________________________

Function Slideshow()
Dim objArgs, t

t = ""
Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments

If (objArgs.Count > 0) Then
t = objArgs(0)
Else
WScript.Quit
End If

Slideshow = t

End Function 'Slideshow
'_________________________________________________ ______________________________

Sub CheckHost()
Dim objSHL

Const Q = """"
Set objSHL = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

If Not WScript.FullName = WScript.Path & "\cscript.exe" Then
objSHL.Run "cmd /c " & WScript.Path & "\cscript.exe //NOLOGO " & _
Q & WScript.scriptFullName & Q & " " & Q & Slideshow & Q, _
1, False
WScript.Quit 0
End If

End Sub 'CheckHost
'_________________________________________________ ______________________________

Sub DisplayHelp()
Dim t

t = Slideshow
t = Right(t, Len(t) - InStrRev(t, "\"))

With WScript
.Echo
.Echo " This window will automatically close within " & _
Keypress_Interval & " seconds "
.Echo " after you close """ & t & """."
.Echo
End With 'WScript

End Sub 'DisplayHelp
'_________________________________________________ ______________________________