Why no screensaver?

[CWuestefeld]

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that my screen saver is no longer coming up. It just sits there showing the desktop, regardless of how long I leave it. The monitor never goes to sleep, either.

Many times I've gone into display properties, and reset the timeouts for both screensaver and power management. It's not that some media player is running -- this even happens with a newly-booted desktop (of course with normal startup apps, but those don't seem relevant).

Has anybody ever seen this behavior on an XP system?

[Ehtyar]

I had this problem...probably about two installs ago. I never ended up finding out how to fix, and since I was only a month of so from my next install cycle I gave up after probably a cumulative hour of googling. It was good in a way; it got me in the habit of turning my monitor off when I left my computer. Sorry I can't offer anything more helpful.

Ehtyar.

[city_zen]

Has anybody ever seen this behavior on an XP system?

-CWuestefeld (October 25, 2008, 05:11 PM)

I have (half) the same problem. My screensaver does work, but my monitor never goes to sleep. If I go into Control Panel -> Energy Settings and change the interval to something else, and then change it back to the previous setting, it starts working again ... until the next reboot. The whole set-reset thing gets old real quick after a couple of attempts, so I've temporarily given up on it. Didn't do too much googling on it either.
I guess I'll have to develop the same habit as Ehtyar and start turning my monitor off when I leave it.   

[zridling]

I turn off the monitor if I leave the desk for more than a couple of hours. I think one problem is that power management must involve every subsystem of the OS, and it's a lot harder to perfect than many other things.

[cranioscopical]

For some people updating nVidia drivers fixes the problem. Don't know if that's relevant to you.

This 'problem' is one of those things that doesn't really matter but annoys the heck out of one nonetheless.
 

[app103]

I have noticed if running certain software, the screensaver will not come on, but power management will still turn the monitor off. This happens with the application no matter what version of Windows you are running it on. I can't even manually run a screensaver when the application is running, which can make testing screensavers I make a bit difficult, without shutting down the offending program. (not something worth mentioning by name, since it's not a very popular application and not likely to be one you are using, but the issue could also exist with other apps)

And on my other PC (WinME) I have a problem with power management turning off my monitor when it isn't supposed to and it not coming back on unless I push the button to power off the monitor and turn it back on again. (Imaging your monitor shutting itself off while you are playing a game)

At first I thought my monitor was dying, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I had to change the power management settings to set the monitor as always on and just manually shut the monitor off.

[CWuestefeld]

Saving power is only part of my concern. I'd also like to actually save my screen (I've actually seen burned-in LCD displays, believe it or not). Also, I use JKDefrag as a screen saver, and I'd like to have my disk continue to get defragged.

In the meantime, I've cobbled together a true DC solution. I've added Skrommel's RunScreenSaver as a button on my FARR, so I just have to remember to click this.