Recent Lock screen peculiarities

Win11 Pro 21H2, build 22000.593

First, some background:
I run a program (Veracrypt) that supposedly take some action when the computer goes to sleep or when the computer is locked. Something broke the action on sleep behavior a few months ago (probably my migrating to Win 11) but the action on lock sometimes still works. So I'm trying to enable a "lock on inactivity timeout" function.

Something that I did apparently changed the lock screen behavior. The lock screen now displays after a period of inactivity but the computer is not locked. If I press a key or move the mouse the desktop returns without my entering my password. Windows seems to be using the lock screen as an old style screen saver. As near as I can tell, this does nothing in regards to my end goal so I would like to undo it.

I just checked the Group Policy editor and I do not have any of the
User Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalization
policies set. (If I do set the screen saver policies there including "Password protect the screen saver" would that perform a true Lock?)

I vaguely remember changing some group policy, but not the one mentioned above ... and I thought I changed it back when it didn't work. does anybody know of a policy (other than the ones mentioned above) that would cause the behavior I've mentioned? More generally (and a bit off-topic) is there a way to determine what group policies have been changed from their default "Not configured" state?

Screensaver option is buried inside control panel since most people do not use them much anymore. In search type "change screensaver".

I'll dig around there. I don't really have any interest in screen savers per se, but I do have interest in doing a lock after a period of inactivity. All my searches led me to screen saver pages. Is a password protected screen saver the same as a lock? I know they are functionally the same, but apparently VeraCrypt knows when a user goes into a "locked" state so I need an actual lock, not just something that performs the same function.

Check your sign-in options in Settings - Accounts that 'When PC wakes from sleep' is selected for 'If you've been away, when should Windows require you to sign in again?'.

That's greyed out and shows the text "Authentication is required when this PC wakes from sleep. Security policies on this PC are preventing you from changing this setting". I'm pretty sure that means I have a Group Policy controlling this. (I wonder what it is?)

In any case, sleep isn't the issue (at the moment). I'm trying to set Lock behavior, not Sleep behavior.

That setting should be changed to 'never'. Messed up there. If you can't change it then as you say something is set in Group policy or maybe a security app?



Check dynamic lock as well.