Screensaver has stopped working

All of a sudden my screensaver wont start. I can go to DisplayProperties/Screen Saver and choose any available screensaver and hit "Apply ". The selected SS shows up in the sample window and it works if I hit "Preview ", however after waiting the appropriate time (1 minute for now) with no screen activity, no screen saver appears. The only change that I can think of that occured around this time is that I installed Picasa, which I have disabled from the Startup group. It is still installed but no longer loads. I also read on a forum about "ehtray.exe" or something like that causing screensaver problems, but I don't have ehtray.exe running in my process list. I can certainly do without a screensaver, but I'd like to have it working again if possible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

screensaver

http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/823304/en-us this may not apply to you ? do you have sp1 sp1a sp2?

 

Well, unfortunately, it does not. I have not installed Plus! screensavers. I built this computer about a month ago and installed a recently purchased copy of XP Home w/SP2 and have applied all updates since then. Up until now the OS has performed exactly as it should. I've been racking my brain to remember if there was anything else that I did in the last couple of days to trigger this. I'm still stumped.

 

I'm sure you tried last known good config. still looking at other info.

 

mergen,

You shouldn't have "ehtray.exe" running on XP Home, it pertains to XP Media edition... so that's good.

Your problem could be caused by something running in the background though. Try disabling all unnecessary programs that are running in the background and see if that helps. If your screensaver works, add the programs back in one at a time to find the culprit. If you run across programs you're not sure if you should disable check HERE for information. Good luck... post back if the problem continues (or you fix it).

B

 

Well, I don't have any wireless devices so I don't think the HID INput Data Filter resolution would apply. I was interested in the connection to the CyberLink software conflict, but I then realized that I have some of their software, but it is on another computer! No CyberLink or PCMService startup item found. I think I'm going to disable all startup items and start from there. If I come up with anything to report, I'll be sure to do so.

 

Well, after rebooting a a few dozen times, I finally isolated the guilty program. It turned out to be MacroExpress, a macro program which I've used for many years and has been installed on this computer for several weeks. Apparently, something that was installed or changed in the last few days caused ME to interfere with the screensaver function. Anyway, I uninstalled/reinstalled ME and the screensaver worked fine with the default file open. When I replaced the default macro file with the macro file that I created and have been using, the screensaver problem reoccured. Anyway, the Macro Express people have a very active forum and are very good at troubleshooting and are responsive to tech support request, so I'll try to get them to help me sort this out.

Thanks to everyone for your interest and your comments.

 

mergen,

Good work, glad you found the problem. Thanks for posting back.

B