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The shortcut to locking your Windows desktop
Here's a neat trick for those of you with a paranoid need to lock down your workstation on a regular basis. Sure, you could hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and click "Lock Workstation" but, that's a multi-keystroke + mouse kind of operation. Hackaback writes with a better and quicker way. Create a new shortcut anywhere you like on your desktop, and instead of giving the target to an application or document, use this: "rundll32 user32.dll, LockWorkStation". Name it what you will -- "Lock me!" comes to mind -- and you'll have a double-clickable icon that will instantly lock up your valuable data.
Comments
14
Subscribe to commentsrothgarJun 25th 2007 3:33PM
was Win+L really that hard?
crowJun 25th 2007 3:35PM
@rothgar: I was on the brink to write the very same comment, but you beat me! :D
WoodyJun 25th 2007 4:06PM
3rd'd
TristanJun 25th 2007 4:32PM
4th.
I think it's easier to just hit Win+L than have to get to the icon and then double click
polyphonyJun 25th 2007 4:40PM
How to make easy things hard. It remembers me when I saw in the daily wtf a program to execute things in console by moving the mouse to click "Start" and then "Execute". There is a function to do it by code.
SamJun 25th 2007 4:44PM
4th'd. Really. With sorry ass KB's (old laptops) with no Win key, though, you can still go C+A+D and Enter.Using your mouse to minimize to desktop (Remember, no Win key) and then clicking on the shortcut would take more time. Unless you put it on your quick launch. But really, C+A+D+Enter.
VitaminCMJun 26th 2007 5:52PM
Must be an engineer. Overengineering something elegant that already existed.
RPJun 25th 2007 7:14PM
Although Win-L doesn't work on Win2000, if anyone still runs that.
Dan WarneJun 25th 2007 8:04PM
Or.... you could press Windows Key + L :-)
ColinJun 26th 2007 12:29AM
@Everyone else:
You all beat me to Win-L, damnit!
This article *does* have some uses though. At work, I've created the aforementioned shortcut and set it as a Scheduled Task; set it to run when your computer has been idle for five minutes, and it will auto-lock. (I suppose this can be done with the screen saver panel, but I have my screen saver disabled.)
TaomynJun 26th 2007 4:10AM
Slow news day eh!
I expect this sort of lame article from idiots posting to Digg (not that I dislike Digg), but here?
As Hans Moleman would say: "you stole 2 minutes of my life"
ChavalJun 26th 2007 12:33PM
LOL!!!
MonotoJun 26th 2007 1:11PM
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Win+L. We get it. And for all us keyboard fanatics/mouse haters, Win+L works great. But there are those times when a clickable shortcut does just the trick.
I keep my shortcut in the Quick Launch toolbar so that I don't have to minimize everything to get to the Desktop. The shortcut also comes in handy when I'm using VNC to remotely connect to my PC so I can lock it when I'm done (Win+L typically locks the workstation I'm at, not the one I'm connected to).
DavidJun 26th 2007 6:16PM
I have extra keys (Web, Search, Mail, Calculator)along the top of my keyboard, and I remapped one of them to lock the workstation. One tap (without even looking) as I walk away, and the machine is locked. Most keyboards with these sorts of "extra" keys allow custom mapping through the software that comes with them.