Lesson 1: Troubleshooting Post-Installation Configuration Issues

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Screen Saver

Although today’s modern displays have hardware that protects them from the problem of

image burn-in, many users still like having a screen saver become active after their computer

has been idle for some time. Burn-in occurred on older monitors, where a static image that did

not change would become “burned in” to the monitor’s display. Windows Vista comes with

several default screen savers. It is also possible to download screen savers from the Internet,

although you should caution users about doing that because nefarious third parties often

use free screen saver software on the Internet as a way of installing Trojan applications on a

computer.

Screen savers have a security benefit in a corporate environment. You can configure a screen

saver so that the computer becomes locked when the computer has been idle. For example,

say that someone employed in an organization that uses an open plan environment is working

on sensitive payroll information using a Windows Vista computer. This person gets called

away from the computer and forgets to lock the screen. Without a screen saver, a curious

coworker might wander by and be able to view the sensitive information. However, if the

screen saver is configured correctly, the computer automatically locks itself. This minimizes

the chance that someone unauthorized will gain access to the computer.

Screen saver configuration is available through the Personalization item in the Control Panel.

As with the configuration of desktop background and other Windows Vista personalization

tasks, a user with standard privileges can perform this task. Practice 4, at the end of this les-

son, walks through the screen saver configuration process.

NOTE

3D screen savers

Many of the default screen savers that ship with Windows Vista require a card capable of displaying

3D effects. This is unlikely to be a problem unless you are running Windows Vista in a virtual

machine environment.

Practice: Post-Installation Troubleshooting

In these practices, you will perform several exercises that will familiarize you with tools that

are useful in performing post-installation troubleshooting. These include the installation of

legacy hardware, examining system stability, and configuring personalized settings.