Windows 10 - Enable Screensaver when no user is signed in

Question

Issue Summary

We are looking to display a screensaver on Windows 10 workstations BEFORE any users sign in, but updating screensaver settings in GPEDIT.MSC to force a screensaver does not seem to work

Issue Detail

We are Trying to use a custom screensaver to display a static web page as a screensaver for digital signage purposes. To meet security requirements, no user can be signed into Windows to display this page. We identified an open source screensaver product that allows web pages to be displayed as a screensaver, which would meet our needs, provided that the screensaver activates while no user is signed into the workstation.

We have set the group policies to enable the screen saver, force the use of a specific screensaver, and to set the screensaver threshold to only 60 seconds. When we sign out of the machine, the screensaver never activates unless the user signs in and the workstation times out.

Desired Outcome

With no user signed into the workstation, the PC should begin to display the screensaver set in the group policy editor under User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization and modifying the values for:

• Force specific screen saver
• Screen saver timeout
• Prevent changing screen saver

Edit: We have attempted the advice on the following link and were unable to get the screen saver to load:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/185348/how-to-change-the-logon-screen-saver-in-windows

Answer 1

I got lucky with a Google search and ended up on this page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/185348/how-to-change-the-logon-screen-saver-in-windows

The instructions there fixed the issue of the Windows 10 workstation failing to load the screensaver. We have additional technical difficulties to overcome, but those are associated with the custom screensaver product's design, not with Windows itself.

Answer 2

Change the logon screen saver

Click Start, click Run, type regedt32, and click OK.
Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
In the Details pane, double-click the
SCRNSAVE.EXE string value item.
In the Value data box, type the path and name of the screen saver, and then click OK.

Important Make sure that you specify the path correctly to the screen saver. If the screen saver is located in %SystemRoot%\System32, the explicit path is not required. 

You have now changed the logon screen saver.

Change the logon screen saver timeout time You can also change the amount of time that elapses before the logon screen saver starts. The default is 900 seconds (15 minutes).

To change the length of time before the logon screen saver starts, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedt32, and then click
OK.
Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
In the Details pane, double-click the
ScreenSaveTimeOut string value item.
In the Value data box, type the number of seconds, and then click OK.

You have now changed the length of time that elapses before the logon screen saver starts. from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/185348/how-to-change-the-logon-screen-saver-in-windows saving because I normally block machines on my network from accessing M$oft.