Windows 7 Logon Screensaver

[disco_samurai]

Hi All

 

I am trying to setup a screensaver for our schools Windows 7 machines that will activate over the logon screen if not in use. I want the screensaver to be able to pull images off a network share so that we can update it with events ongoing in the school.

 

Now I know that Windows 7's screensavers use Direct3D support which is not available pre-login so I have taken a copy of the Windows XP Slideshow 'ssmypics.scr' from a Windows XP machine and put that on the Windows 7 machine.

 

I then configured the screensaver as per these instructions I got from insidetheregistry.com

 

"for those of you that want to have a logon screensaver of photo's here is how to do it with Windows 7

you need the XP photo screen saver. ( you can use another one but it can't use D3D. and the settings may be in different places)

to configure this screen saver you need to edit the registry.

This is where windows will look for the settings in the registry for this specific screen saver

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\Screen Saver.Slideshow

Note S-1-5-19 is the "Local Service" account

[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\Screen Saver.Slideshow]

"ImageDirectory"="C:\Path_to_Photos"

Please note that this folder needs to be readable by everyone or at least the local service user.

you can add more options to this screen saver. To do this log-on as a user and set the settings to the screen saver through the control panel for your ssmypics.scr screen saver and copy the registry settings in

HKEY_USERS\*(YOUR USER SSID)*\Control Panel\Screen Saver.Slideshow

to

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\Screen Saver.Slideshow - Local Service account

To tell windows what screen saver to use during the logon screen you have to edit this key

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop"

So far so good!

 

Now when I set this up to point to a folder on the local machine this all works fine, the screensaver is displayed over the logon screen after 60 seconds. However when I change the Image Directory to point to a network share (using the UDP server name) the screen goes black and there is just a small line of text saying "There are no pictures found in \\servername\imagefolder'..... and believe me the pictures are there!

 

Now I'm guessing its a problem with permissioning on my network share preventing the local machine account from accessing the pictures, I've given Everyone full permissions and even tried adding in the the computer account of my test machine with full permissions but so far nothing.

 

I've seen a few other people ask questions on Experts Exchange and here on Edugeek and get as far as me (one of them had the same issue with the black screen/permissions) but they were never updated with answers.

 

If anyone has any suggestions on how to alter the permissions to allow the required access I'd be extremelly greatful!

 

Cheers

 

Neal

[deano]

Just a quick question, but surely a number of machines pulling lots of pictures at the same time would drastically kill bandwidth on your network even if you reduced the image size to a bare minimum

[eddyc]

Could you not have a robocopy startup script on the machine group policy to sync the folder of images with the server share?

[Mr.Ben]

I've done the same, but I gave up on the network share - I use GPP to copy/remove the pictures I want across to the machine. Edited April 13, 2011 by Mr.Ben

[Sohailahmad]

Sorry to revive an old thread..

 

Disco did you get anywhere with the "No photos in \\servername\sharename"?

 

I did find another post in a different forum, they mentioned something about allowing "anonymous logon" to the share and ACL permissions. There is also a group policy for "Network access: Shares that can be accessed anonymously" and "Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users" but these didn't work for me either though it did for the posters..

[disco_samurai]

Hey mate

No I gave up in the end, I tried a few workarounds like you mention but never got it working properly unfortunately!