# Unlock screen as admin (but don't log user out)



## RiotingPacifist (Jul 9, 2010)

I come across idle timeouts or other timeouts (*shakes fist at logmein*) that have left a user i'm remotely supporting screen locked several times a day, as they are usually AFK i can rarely phone them to get their password. I was wondering if there was anyway for a domain admin to unlock the screen without logging the user out.

If i can get a remote shell? (we are looking at getting tools that provide this)
If i can't? (i'd guess i can't but i know you can remotely kill processes with taskkill.exe but killing winlogon fails, so i'm not sure what i'd do)


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## BenTechMac (Jul 8, 2010)

If you are reffering to the idle time, that is configurable in the Preferences > Remote Control Settings under Idle Time Allowed, and can be set to up to 24 hours.?

Or is that not working?


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## RiotingPacifist (Jul 9, 2010)

Nope, because this is remote support some of the tools i use will lock the screen if i get disconnected (unsurprisingly this happens regularly on PCs that have problems) or even when asked to leave their screen unlocked some users will forget and lock it (a pretty good habbit tbh), plus disabling the locking after inactivity would be a bad idea as we usually want it on.

What i want is a way to use my admin powers to unlock the screen without logging them off.

Can a screen be unlocked by changing a registry variable?


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## Synt4xError (Jan 23, 2009)

Users locking their computers are smart. And no, you can't log on to the users profile without logging them out unless you have their password. Depending on what you need to do, you can connect to device manager and computer management remotely while the computer is locked.


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