Screen Saver Has Never Worked

[shadowbru]

I've got an XP Pro Dell machine and the screen saver has never worked since day one. I've looked at all the discussions and my settings are correct in the registry. This machine runs Nortons Internet Security 2004.

I installed the same screen saver on another XP Pro machine that only runs Norton Anti-Virus 2004 and it works great.

The video driver is fine on the first machine and I've checked all the registry settings and the screen saver is in the windows/system32 folder.

I'm getting to hate XP!

 

[edison21]

I'm having the same problem (or a similar one) with my new Dell XP Pro system. My screen saver was not working when I was logged on, but would work when no user was logged in. This was true for the native screen savers and the Plus screen savers. I tried modifying the Group Policy as suggested in one of the posts and enabled the Screen Saver timeout to 5 seconds and the screen saver worked! I tried different settings and they all worked up to near 1 minute and then it worked intermittently. I think there is a problem with another app running but I haven't found it yet (I don't have MRU Blaster on my PC).

 

[linney]

edison21,

Did you check this thread from earlier in the post, it specifically mentions a 1 minute problem?

Windows XP Screensaver Timeout Problem
thread779-639552

 

[edison21]

linney,

Yes, I realize that. I was having the same problem as shadowbru - not being able to get the screen saver to work at all. I was wondering if shadowbru's screen saver worked when he/she was not logged in. Also, I hadn't tried a time out less than one minute because I had only been using the desktop properties to change the setting. Now , I know that the screen saver works. It appears that something makes it think that there is activity so that the screen saver time out is never reached. That's what I am investigating now. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[linney]

edison21,

When you get this far into a post without solving anything all suggestions sound reasonable and worthy of further investigation. The only good thing is that in our wake we leave a referable thread that may help the next unfortunate person to come this way if not the original posters.

So to answer your question, what you say has some merit and may be taken further by using these articles from further up the post, and also troubleshooting in Safe Mode.

310353 - How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP
316434 - HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP

I also note that many threads similar to this seem to involve third party type screensavers as opposed to the inbuilt ones. Very often the inbuilt ones seem to jump in despite having some (albeit minimal) screen action. So your question as to how much screen activity causes the screensaver to activate or not activate is a good point for which I do not know the answer.