Screen saver won't start

Hi- Here is a little issue with a home machine running WinXPpro, on a home network (no domain). To secure our machines from snooping teenagers, we have the screensaver set to activate after 30 minutes, with password protection required for re-entry. Also, the machines require a username and password at bootup.
We also have the "power" option set to turn off the monitor after one hour. Hibernate, hard disk shutdown, and standby, are all disabled.
The screensaver often does not activate, even within an hour. The monitor always goes off after an hour of inactivity, as intended. When I move the mouse, the monitor wakes up again, but the desktop is still wide open. No security there! What is wrong?
I have checked my settings to see if a clever young person snuck in and diluted my security, but the settings are still as I intended them.
BTW, I have the same setup on other machines, some 2000 and some XP, and it generally works OK. Just a bit puzzling? TIA/ Greg.

 

The screen saver also has an option to require password to get back in. That is the one I am trying to use (which does work on other machines).

 

1. The screen saver with password lock should take effect at 30 minutes. The power shutoff should take effect at one hour. Thus, the power shutoff should probably not affect the screensaver initially. 2. This arrangement works fine on other machines.

 

Same "no screensaver" activation problem

Hey there... I just joined this community to post this message, so hopefully I can get a response.

I have been searching all over the place the last couple of months regarding this issue, but have not found any significant remedies. I too am having a problem getting my screensaver to activate. I have a Dell XPS 600 w/ WinXP Media Center SP2. I currently have my screensaver set to activate after 5 minutes of inactivity, and my monitor to turn off after 20 minutes; neither of which are taking place. I've futzed with the settings in every imaginable way and nothing seems to matter. One oddity is when I choose the "Preview" option from the Display > Screen Saver control panel, the chosen one will activate for a minute, and then "wake up" as if the mouse was moved; it doesn't matter which module is chosen, whether it be one of the built-in Windows modules, or another that I've installed myself.

As a temporary workaround, I was using the "switch user" (Windows + L, since it's not on a domain) to go to the Welcome screen where the screensaver activated there. However, this is no longer working either.

I've walked the process tree exhaustively to see if there was any kind of spyware, virus/worm, etc. that may be affecting this timeout, but nothing seems out of place. I even unlpugged all of my input devices (keyboard, mouse, media center remote) to see if there was a signal coming from one of them that would cause it not to activate, but still had the same results.

I'm wondering what else I can do to isolate this issue short of an OS re-install. I'd hate to go through reloading all my software just to fix the screensaver problem. This seems to be a widespread problem since there are many posts similar to these, however again, no one seems to have an idea what might be causing this. Any insight on this issue would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks for your help in advance.

--Cam

P.S. Almost forgot... to head off any possible "have you checked this" inquiries gathered from other posts:
-Task Scheduler service is running and set to auto startup mode
-Hardware acceleration is set to full on my NVIDIA 6800 adapter

 

Cam- Sounds like you have it worse than me! At least mine works on certain days of the week! LOL.

 

Re:

See, that's the damnedest thing. Mine does too, even though I can't nail down any variables that change. I'm just embarassed because I thought I knew Windows and it's intracacies pretty **** well, and an issue like this is a real gut-check.

A side note, I've been looking at posts from all over the place and I saw one on Dell's forums from a while back, but one user had removed the "Dell Media Experience" program and it fixed everything. I'm about to do that and see if that works. I'm up for pretty much anything at this point.

--Cam

 

Thanks Pete- The first solution Kelly has refers to a Windows Update patch which I already have, so no help there. The VBS file might help; I haven't tried it yet. But "Kelly's Korner" has lots of things to read up on. I will look further when time permits.--Greg

 

Yep, I have verified both the CURRENT_USER hive, as well as the USER\.DEAFULT hive and they both contain correct settings (ScreenSaveTimeOut=300, ScreenSaveActive=1, etc.)

Also, the MS KB article posted on Kelly's refers to XP pre-SP1. The Human Interface Device (HID) drivers and service were updated in SP1 to fix the issue.

--Cam

 

Also, I read the VBscript provided on Kelly's site, and it just changes the above stated registry key (HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Display\ScreenSaveActive=1).

--Cam