I am not that great with windows, a look at all the posts on this blog will tell you that, Now with that said, I need to lock my laptop (Windows !) after a few minutes of inactivity.
Step 1/3: Check if you have Security policy installed
Windows 11 HOME shipped without this tool, as it came in the pro and the enterprise. to figure out if you have the tool, Hit start and start typing secpol.msc, if all you see is a suggestion to do a web search instead of an Application, you do not have it, the next step will explain how to install it, If it is indeed there, you can skip step 2 and go to step 3 right away
Step 1/2: Installing GroupPolicy
You only need to do this if in the step above it turned out that Group Policy is not installed on your system.
To Install/Enable Local Security Policy (secpol.msc), you will need to install Group Policy, to get that directly from Microsoft, you can run the following script as administrator (Download link also provided gpedit-enabler.bat), this is courtesy of Major Geeks
@echo off
@echo "This batch file from MajorGeeks.Com will enable Group Policy Editor (Gpedit.msc) on Windows 10 Home."
@echo "If this method fails, there are other methods to try at https://tinyurl.com/majorgeeksgpedit"
pushd "%~dp0"
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt
for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"
pause
Step 3/3: Modify security policy to lock screen after 20 minutes
To do that, you run secpol.msc, then look for Local Policies > Security Options “Interactive Logon: Machine inactivity limit” and set that to 1200 (20 minutes), then restart the computer
and there you have it, the windows login screen will appear after 20 minutes of inactivity, you don’t need to set a screensaver or even connect this to your screen timeout (which is 10 minutes in my case)
Notes about the installation
Running the above batch file as administrator should result in the following being printed.
"This batch file from MajorGeeks.Com will enable Group Policy Editor (Gpedit.msc) on Windows 10 Home." "If this method fails, there are other methods to try at https://tinyurl.com/majorgeeksgpedit" Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.1 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.1 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.521 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.608 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.1 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.608 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.457 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.608 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.457 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool Version: 10.0.22621.1 Image Version: 10.0.22621.608 Processing 1 of 1 - Adding package Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.608 [==========================100.0%==========================] The operation completed successfully. Press any key to continue . . .
In addition to the above, A file should be produced in the same folder as the batch file named List.txt, in my case, the file had the following contents
Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.1.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.1.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.521.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.608.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.1.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~ar-SA~10.0.22621.608.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.457.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.22621.608.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.457.mum Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.608.mum