Mod for Windows Vista Screensaver, “Mystify”

Chances are that if you’ve used Windows Vista, you’ve also had time to check out it’s beautiful screensavers. Aurora, Energy and Mystify are my favourites. But surprisingly, when you click on ‘Settings…’ button of any screensaver you get a message box saying “This Screensaver has no options you can set”. Well, Windows is lying there 😛 Ofcourse you can set options for these screensavers.

Let us take Mystify for example here. By default, you get one line on the screen when using this screensaver:

But, you can actually set the number of lines it shows! This is an example of what the modded Mystify looks like:

You need to go to Registry to mod this screensaver, but I’ll show you a way so you don’t even have to touch registry! Ok, here’s how you do it:

1. Create a text file, say on desktop. (Right-click->New->Text document)
2. Now type (or copy-paste) exactly what you see here:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Mystify]
“NumLines”=dword:00000010

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Mystify\Screen 1]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Screensavers\Mystify\Screen 2]

3. Click File->Save As. Save this file as something like “mystify.reg”. The name doesn’t matter but it should have .reg extension at the end.
4. Now double-click the file. You’ll probably get a User Account Control dialog box asking for permission. Click ‘Continue’.
5. You’ll get another confirmation dialog, this time for Registry Editor. Click ‘Yes’.
6. Now you’ll get a confirmation message saying the value has been added. Click ‘OK’ and run Mystify screensaver.

Notes: 1. The dword value defines the number of lines displayed. I’ve set it to “10”. You can change this value. Eg. Instead of dword:00000010 you can write dword:00000015

2. To go back to default settings, replace dword:00000010 with dword:00000001

3. Remember to BACKUP! Though the chances are really low that something might go wrong. Try this at you own risk.

4. Personally I like the default settings for Mystify, but you may experiment with settings to find which one suits you 😉

Cya 😀