How to set my Steam status to Away while the computer is locked?

Question

I was surprised to learn that Steam does not automatically set my status to Away while Windows 7 is locked. How do i fix that? Whether YouTube is open should not matter.

Answer 1

1. Start Task Scheduler: %windir%\system32\taskschd.msc /s
2. Select the tree root and choose Action, "Create Task..." (not basic task)
3. Name the task "Steam status Away"
4. Click Triggers, New... and make it begin when locking the computer (current user only)
5. Click Actions, New..., start program "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" with argument steam://friends/status/away

Your Steam status will now be set to Away when you lock the PC. As the icon in the notification area doesn't display that, add another task to set it back to normal when you unlock the PC:

Create another task named "Steam status Online" using argument steam://friends/status/online