Looking for those Screen Saver Settings in Vista?

Jason — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:13:59 GMT

The sad fact is Windows Vista will be shipping with screensavers without the options to be configured, however they were originally designed to be customizable. Stephen Coy, the designer of these screensavers, tells me this feature might be available after Vista ships, perhaps in the form of a powertoy or service pack? But if you can’t wait, then you can follow the steps below to customize the screensavers through the registry.

The registry keys that control the screensavers are located under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Screensavers\

To apply these registry hacks, you should right click the links and “Save as…” the registry files onto your computer. Then double click on them to apply the changes.

Ribbons screensaver

This is the default look of the Ribbons screensaver.	This version of Ribbons has a greater number of ribbons, which are thinner. Download the registry file for this style.
This version of Ribbons has thicker and greater number of ribbons. Download the registry file for this style.	This version of Ribbons has extremely thick but only few number of ribbons. Download the registry file for this style.

The Ribbons screensaver has two options.

NumRibbons defines the maximum number of ribbons that can appear on the screen at any one time. This is a described as a simple integer count. The maximum number of ribbons is 256. An integer higher than this will have no effect. The minimum number of ribbons is 1.
RibbonWidth defines the maximum width of the ribbons. This is a described as a floating point integer value.

Mystify screensaver

This is the default look of the Mystify screensaver.	This version of Mystify has a greater number of lines. Download the registry file for this style.
This version of Mystify has a few lines. Download the registry file for this style.

The Mystify screensaver has one option.

NumLines defines the maximum number of lines that can appear on the screen at any one time. This is a described as a simple integer count. The minimum number of lines is 1.

Bubbles screensaver

This is the default look of the Bubbles screensaver.	This version of Bubbles has a fewer number of large non-transparent bubbles. The background is the desktop. Download the registry file for this style.
This version of Bubbles has a greater number of smaller non-transparent bubbles. The background is black. Please note: This version of Bubbles has been known to cause problems after extended period of times. Please do not use this in a work environment as it may cause instabilities. Download the registry file for this style.

The Bubbles screensaver has four options.

MaterialGlass defines if the bubbles are of a glass material or not. This is a described as a boolean value. A value of 1 will turn the bubbles into glass-like transparent bubbles. A value of 0 will turn the bubbles into metallic non-transparent bubbles.
Radius defines the radius size of the bubbles. This is described as a floating point integer. The larger the radius, the less number of bubbles will appear on the screen, and vice versa.
ShowShadows defines if the bubbles have a shadow or not. This is described as a boolean value. A value of 1 will enable shadows below the bubbles. A value of 0 will disable shadows under the bubbles.
ShowBubbles defines if the bubbles are displayed on the desktop or not. This is described as a boolean value. A value of 1 will render the bubbles on the desktop. A value of 0 will render the bubbles against a solid black background.

Restore to default

To return the screensavers to their original state, you would simply delete the registry values under the key related to the screensaver.

For example, if you were to restore the Bubbles screensaver to the default options, you would navigate to ...\CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Bubbles\ and delete all the associated values (Material Glass, Radius, ShowBubbles, ShowShadows).

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Looking for those Screen Saver Settings in Vista?

Ribbons screensaver

Mystify screensaver

Bubbles screensaver

Restore to default