Article ID: 126627 - Last Review: November 21, 2006 - Revision: 3.2

HOWTO: How to Disable the Screen Saver Programmatically

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This article was previously published under Q126627
3.50 3.51 WINDOWS NT kbgraphic
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SUMMARY

Under Windows NT, you can disable the screen saver from your application code. To detect if the screen saver is enabled, use this: 
   SystemParametersInfo( SPI_GETSCREENSAVEACTIVE,

                         0,
                         pvParam,
                         0
                       );
On return, the parameter pvParam will point to TRUE if the screen saver setting is enabled in the System control panel applet and FALSE if the screen saver setting is not enabled.

To disable the screen saver setting, call SystemParametersInfo() with this: 
   SystemParametersInfo( SPI_SETSCREENSAVEACTIVE,

                         FALSE,
                         0,
                         SPIF_SENDWININICHANGE
                       );

MORE INFORMATION

When the screen saver is activated by the system, it is run on a desktop other than the user's desktop (similar to the login desktop displayed when no one is logged in). Therefore, you cannot use FindWindow() to determine if the screen saver is currently active.

Here are two methods that you can use to detect if the screen saver is currently running:

  • Get the name of the current screen saver from the registry, parse the PE header of the screen saver binary to get the process name, then check for an active process with that name in the performance registry.
  • Write a screen saver that would be spawned by the system and would in turn spawn the "real" screen saver. The first screen saver could notify your application when the screen saver has been activated or deactivated.
APPLIES TO
  • Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface, when used with:
    • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.5
    • Microsoft Windows NT Server 3.51
    • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.5
    • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51
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