Monitor stopped powering down

My monitor always powered down with no problem. I had it set to power down after 15 or 30 minutes (with home/office scheme selected and hard drives never turned off. I use the 3D text as my screen saver, with the time being shown).

Then about a week or so ago it stopped powering down. The screensaver would show non-stop. The unit never powered down to a black screen, despite XP being told to do so.

As best I could recall I just installed a couple of EA sports games before this happened, but that shouldn't affect anything. (But then again, my friend with XP installed a game and they suddenly couldn't access the Internet anymore!) My memory won't tell me what all else I might have installed back then.

To my knowledge the only thing that would keep your system/monitor 'awake' is keyboard and/or mouse movement. That is, no program activity should affect it the powering down of the monitor. True? Or is that only for screen saver activity?

Anyways, just thought it was odd and wondered if anyone had any insight. I guess I could try uninstalling the games and see if that does anything.

 

Well I found this out....

Well, I found out something tonight...by accident!

Whenever I was talking about my power settings, it was based on what I saw by right-clicking on the desktop > Properties > Screen Saver and then the Power button on that page. That's how I always set things in the past, so I didn't even think of the Control Panel.

Well, tonight I ran across the Power Options icon in the Control Panel. So I open it and lo and behold its settings say ALWAYS ON! According to IT nothing was set to power down! That's why the monitor wasn't shutting down. YET, going to the power settings I mentioned in the previous paragraph, it showed things set to turn off after 30 minutes, etc.! Here we have two different places talking about the same thing (power management) and yet they say different things!

SO! There are TWO places to set power settings and the ones in the Control Panel apparently OVERRIDE the power settings found by right-clicking on the desktop!

Personally I'm confused by this. I would think they would both have the same settings. If anyone has any insight it would be most welcome.

I'm a single user so I don't know about/mess with multiple user settings. Maybe that is part of the answer, I don't know.

 

Davey that is very odd indeed.

I have WinMe at home so I can't speak fully about how power settings work on XP, but I do use XP at work and I thought it was the same.

From winMe -> If I access power settings from desktop properties or the control panel, they both take me to the same place - apparently the same Power Settings dialog box.

If I make a change in one, the other reflects this, and if I open the power settings from the control panel first, leaving the window that appears open, then try the same from the desktop > Properties > Screen Saver > (Power) Settings. Another window doesn't open... the focus just hops over to the previously opened Power settings window - so, as expected, this proves at least that they are one and the same thing.

Sorry, I'm home right now so I can't test this theory out on XP. I would have thought that since you've changed settings in the past from the desktop route, and it worked, this should work for you now.

Maybe you are right, and multiple user settings can have an impact on how this works...

Sorry I haven't really answered your question here, someone else reading this might be able to enlighten us.

 

Screensaver

Thanks for your feedback kompiler.

Well, you are right. It DOES open the same window when going through the Control Panel...or by right-clicking on the desktop.

However, I _swear_ the windows were showing 2 different things the other night: one was showing Turn off Monitor "After 30 minutes" and "Never" on the other. I also swear it said Home/Office scheme on one, and the Always On scheme on the other. I dunno.... Right now they show the same thing, so they are synchronized, and appear to stay sychronized when I change them now.

I've done a bit of testing and found my problem: the screen saver is waking the monitor up! I set the monitor to turn off after 1 minute and set the screen saver to wait 2 minutes. After 1 min the screen goes black, then at 2 minutes the ss starts and my monitor wakes up/comes on! So now I have the culprit to the problem. The problem now is, why is the ss waking up the monitor? Screensaver's aren't supposed to do that that I know of...and I'm using the Microsoft-supplied screensavers.

Okay, more testing shows that all the "3D" screensavers are waking up the monitor (3D text, 3D pipes, 3D Flying Objects and 3D Flower Box). NON-3D screensavers such as Bezier, Marquee, and Mystify do NOT wake up the monitor. Is that weird or what?

I don't know if something got installed on my system and somehow just affected those four 3D ss. I don't think the 3D ss are supposed to wake up the monitor, are they?

I did install an F-22 demo ss not long ago. I also had some 'stealth' ss program installed. I just removed it using Add/Remove Programs. I also removed the F-22 ss by just deleting it. After removing those programs, the 3D screensavers _still_ wake up the monitor. Maybe the 3D ss are special and are supposed to keep the monitor awake....

The "solution" at this point is for me to just use a non-3D screensaver, but unless the 3D ss are _made_ to keep the monitor awake, then something else is still wrong. I didn't think software could affect the monitor's power state, but I guess I'm wrong based on those screensavers...and also based on the fact that my Internet connection, when it was about to disconnect, would pop up a window and inform me of such. That seemed to also wake up the monitor.