Goodbye Annoying Password Time-Out Problem!

[Jon Westfall]

Quickly after the introduction of the AKU 2 release of Windows Mobile 5, I noticed a really annoying problem. In previous versions, whenever you left your device on with external power (With power properties set not to turn off the device), the password time out period was disabled. Thus, you could have the device nicely docked in your car, drive along happily, and rest assured that the device wouldn't start prompting your for your password as you operated a 2 ton piece of metal propelled down the highway. Or you could have your device act as an alarm clock and not have to key in your PIN number just to turn the dang thing off in the morning. Life was good.<br /><br />All that changed with the AKU 2 release. Now that administrators could control the password policies on your device, more control was added to this time-out thing. The most annoying of which was the way it handled always-on power. Now if the device was powered on, but received no input within a set amount of time, BANG - password screen. Effectively annoying GPS users around the world, and promoting lax security habits (for example, I simply stopped using a PIN number - not a good idea!). Now I can see perfectly reasonable arguments why this is a good thing - devices left in a cradle at the office come to mind. Your desktop computer locks automatically after a period of non use, why not your Pocket PC as well. But for some of us that didn't find ourselves in that situation, the new 'feature" was more annoyance than anything.<br /><br />I'd been mulling over the issue for months, searching bulletin boards for solutions, and finally gave up somewhere in May of this year. But today a ray of hope dawned and what I was searching for was finally found - how to turn back the clock and make things the way they SHOULD be!<br /><PAGEBREAK><br />XDA-Developers forum member <i>Mutant</i> <a href="http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=43970">posted</a> back in June a registry tweak that, at the time, no one really commented on over on that board. The tweak was to change the following registry key:<br /><br /><br />HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Security\LASSD\AE\{50C13377-C66D-400C-889E-C316FC4AB374}<br /><br />- The value called AEFrequencyType will be 1. Change it to 2.<br /><br /><br />Being the diligent editor I am, I changed it and amazingly, my screen didn't time-out back to the password screen while on external power. Turning the device off and back on again after the time-out produced the desired effects (it prompted me for a password), but the tyranny of always prompting for a password was gone!<br /><br />One caveat that I discovered is the following: If you open the "Lock" applet in Control Panel to adjust anything (i.e. set a new password, change the time-out), the device will change that 2 back to a 1, making it necessary to change it back one again. This can be annoying, but not nearly as annoying as having to key the password in while driving. It should also be noted that if you have an administrator that has set password policies on your device, you're out of luck - the next time they update your 2 will be overwritten by a 1.<br /><br />So now my life is a bit easier than it was, anyone else been plagued by this or was I suffering in isolation?

[JonnoB]

It surprises me still that changes in software aren't always thought through very well in how that change might affect how people use the software. I know it is impossible to consider every possible implementation, but this seems with the registry change (a setting) that this was left purposefully configurable without a UI to do such configuration - silly.

Software engineers... use this principle as a rule of thumb: Add functionality, but not at the cost of removing existing usability or functionality. Always add without taking away.

[brianchris]

There may (or may not) be other scenarios where this was a problem, but for GPS navigation, this was a HUGE issue!

Actually, before I read this post, I wasn't aware it was related to Windows Mobile / AKU2.....you see, I upgraded to a newer version of GPS navigation software (from iGuidence v2.x to 3.0) at the same time as I preformed the AKU2 ROM upgrade on my 8125. THEREFORE, while I have been heavily impacted by the issue, *I* thought the issue was related to the new version of iGuidence! Its been on my to-do list for some time to contact iGuidence support about it, but now I'm glad I never got around to it!

Your post made it clear what really was going on! And it made me realize that *I* wasn't the only one suffereing with this problem. Wow....thanks so much!!! My work-around to date was to increase my passwor time-out to two hours or so whenever I needed to use GPS (falls under tha catagory of poor password policies). The worst part is, IF your WM5 AKU 2 device was hooked up to any exchange box (hosted or not), you're FORCED to utilize a password (which, again, ultimately is a good thing, except in relationship to this problem).

Now, I haven't needed a Pocket PC registry editor in some time, so I'm not current on which ones are the best / most inexpensive for WM5.....can anyone make any suggestions? Soon I'll make that registry change and kiss that problem goodbye! (at least until I make any lock "changes" again). Hopefully soon, someone will make a utility to toggle this, or even better Microsoft will offer some sort of fix!

Thanks again!

[Jason Lee]

Wow, very nice. I set my timeout to 1 minute to test this out. Finnaly!

I will listen to music on my device while going to sleep some nights. I open media player, set it off and turn off the screen. After 15 minutes the nice dark room is lit by the screen turning back on and displaying the password screen! You can no longer shut the screen off with media player because of the password screen......

The GPS thing was irritating too. This hack is GREAT!!! :mrgreen:

[Dave Beauvais]

Thank you for posting this! I assumed it was A Treo Thing(TM). Since I installed the update on my Treo before I even used it for the first time, I never knew it didn't do this before the update. The only hands-on experience I had with WM5 prior to this was the horrible "upgrade" to WM5 for my hx4700; it didn't behave this way, so I figured it was something Palm did when tweaking things for one-handed operation.

In a way, I can see the logic behind the behavior. If I leave my device docked at my desk when walking out of the office to take a bio break or whatever, it might be nice to know that someone walking up wouldn't be able to just grab it and get to my contacts or e-mail. Of course about 95% of the time my Treo goes with me, but as a general rule, I understand the logic. Still, it's nice to be able to work around it.

If you have a registry editor that allows you to export and import .reg files, you could just export this setting and import it back in whenever necessary, such as after changing the password.

Thanks again for passing along the tip; it's very nice to have the ability to disable this annoying (to me) behavior!

[weatheryoko]

But you may want to look @ this solution. This solution is more permanent but a little more difficult that a simple one line reg hack. If it helps someone great....

http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=47912&amp;highlight=device+lock+tomtom

[Faenad]

It's also possible to create a small exe file, to be put in the windows/startup folder, that change automatically the value to 2 at each reset.

The same trick is used to have Cleartype enabled in landscape and staying that way (at each reset the necessary registry changes were reverted to default).

[Jon Westfall]

But you may want to look @ this solution. This solution is more permanent but a little more difficult that a simple one line reg hack. If it helps someone great....

http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=47912&amp;highlight=device+lock+tomtom

This solution, in my eyes, is a very poor one. You're basically running another application, in the background, just to emulate activity so the timeout never times out. Just another piece of the puzzle that can go wrong. The registry key, despite needing to be re-done after editing the password properties, is a better solution because - really - how often do you edit your password properties? I usually (to steal a line from Ron Popeil) just "Set it and forget it" after a hard-reset.

[gregh]

thanks for posting this Jon, I've been suffering with this problem for ages, emailed TomTom support and various folk with no luck!

Just off to try it out now :)

I hope you don't mind if I post a link from my website back to this page to help others out.

For the guy asking about what regeditor to use, I used PHM

http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/RegEdit/

Regards,

Greg

[ChristopherTD]

Jon

Thanks for posting this, I had enabled that tweak but lost it after a hard reset and couldn't remember where it had come from. Trying to find anything on XDA Developers is enormously difficult - just too much stuff to sift through.

I shall make a note of this for next time!

[Jon Westfall]

Jon

Thanks for posting this, I had enabled that tweak but lost it after a hard reset and couldn't remember where it had come from. Trying to find anything on XDA Developers is enormously difficult - just too much stuff to sift through.

I shall make a note of this for next time!

You're right - I've found that when it comes to XDA-Devs, if you find the information once - store it somewhere in your own files! Otherwise finding it again will be a nightmare! It's a great resource, but it really needs more organization!

[iPAUL]

This problem also plagues the Axim X51 (WM5) after applying Dell's A12 ROM update.

The registry edit worked to fix my X51v - Confirmed.

Thanks HUGE for posting this!!!

iPAUL

[welovejesus]

Jon,
Thanks a million for sharing this! It's best hack of the year IMHO. It will save many people from car wrecks :wink:

[zx9john]

Hey all - thank you for this thread (saved by google once again)...

Tell me - will setting the DWORD to 0 disable this feature completely?

It's driving me nuts (so bad i have a steering wheel on my crotch).

With my corporate authentication layer and SIM PIN i have 3 passwords to enter before i can use my damn phone sometimes.

[BoxWave]

I just caught up with this thread, a.w.e.s.o.m.e. Very happy to see the problem has been taken care of.

[zx9john]

hi guys,

I thought i'd post this up here as this registry mod wasn't working too well for me and some more google'n turned this up (from XDA-developers.com) and it fixed it good 'n proper on my atom.

"it is very simple registry hack. just go to hklm\security\policies\policies, look for name '00001023', and change the value to 1"

that allows you to go into Settings/Lock and change the time-out to 24 hours but the key will sometimes get reset back to zero...

one of the good ppl over at m*******today.com created a sweet little .cab that will monitor that key and change it back to 1 if the exchange server tries to overwrite the hack.

http://m*******today.com/forum/showthread.php?p=68058#post68058

[martin_ayton]

On my WM5 Vario II (aka TyTn) I loved this hack. When I recently got my WM6 Vario III (aka Tilt / TyTn II), it was one of the first hacks I applied, however, there appears to be a problem with it on my machine at least:

If I apply the hack, it does sort out the password timeout on AC power issue. However, it also resets the password timeout on screen-off to zero. If I then go back in to the password settings to give myself a few minutes between the screen going off and having to enter my password again, then that action undoes the original hack. So... it appears that I can either have my PPC staying live and accessible when it's on AC power, or I can have it not needing a password instantly it goes to sleep (on battery power) or I turn it off, but not both at the same time. :(

Does anyone have a solution to this?

Cheers, Martin.

[Edited for clarity]

[eepyaich]

On my WM5 Vario II (aka TyTn) I loved this hack. When I recently got my WM6 Vario III (aka Tilt / TyTn II), it was one of the first hacks I applied, however, there appears to be a problem with it on my machine at least


I'm glad I'm not the only one - I upgraded my Vario II yesterday and have seen exactly the same problem! It feels as though there should be a different set of registry settings that do what we want, but I'm very nervous of trying other registry changes.

Anyone managed to solve this issue yet?