Windows Vista Screensavers don’t have an options page, and clicking the Settings button in the Screen Saver Settings shows the message This screen saver has no options that you can set. Long Zheng revealed that the Windows Vista Screensavers were designed to be customizable and he provides the registry hacks to configure them.
Registry Hacks
Registry Hacks for the following Vista Screensavers are available in this link.
- Ribbons
- Mystify
- Bubbles
The Screensaver settings are read from the following registry key:
HTML Application (HTA) to Configure the Screensavers
Tech Republic made available some HTA files to easily configure Windows Vista Screensavers, without needing to edit the registry manually.
You can download the HTA files from the following Tech Republic links:
- Unlocking the Bubbles screen saver’s hidden settings in Vista
- Unlocking the Ribbons and Mystify screen savers’ hidden settings in Vista
To avoid problems with Antivirus software, they’ve renamed the HTML Application file’s extension to .txt. In order to use it, you must rename the file with .hta extension. For example, change Bubbles.txt to Bubbles.hta. Double-click Bubbles.hta to run it.
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