Screensaver doesnt stay on

Recently the screensaver, which is 3D flying objects (shouldnt matter), has been coming on after the computer is idle for the set time, but then it goes off after a short period of time and stays at the desktop.

Why is this happening?

 

Do you have Weatherbug installed? It kicks the screen saver off on our Win98 system and although the screen saver usually comes back on, occasionally it stays off.

If you do have Weatherbug, try shutting it down and see if that corrects the problem. If so, you've identified the culprit and then you get to decide what you want to do with Weatherbug.

Another possibility is if you've installed an optical mouse or have recently replaced the mouse pad for your optical mouse. Some mouse pads have surfaces that fool the optics into thinking it's moving.

I've also seen the screen saver kick off with ZoneAlarm running when its icon starts flashing its alert notification.

 

i dont have weatherbug, but weathercast, which i installed around the time the problem started. Ill remove it and see if its the problem. Shame i cant seem to just remove it from startup since its a great little program.

Thanks for your help.

 

Have you tried start~run~Msconfig and changing the weather app from there? Should be able to prevent it running at startup.

 

after just recovering settings from a week ago since things went wrong on my computer i was able to unselect the program from coming up at startup. But i dont think that weathercast is in fact the problem. What can it be?

 

There are some known issues with XP and screensavers and standby/hibernation. Basically, if the computer is set to go into standby and one of the 3D screensavers is active, instead of going into standby, it does something else...going back to the desktop is one of them, although if it's given enough time, it usually goes on into standby.

Check to see if you have standby or hibernation enabled (Control Panel>Display>Screensaver tab>Power button) and if you do, set System Standby to "Never" and on the Hibernation tab, if the box is checked, uncheck it, click OK. Then wait and see if the screensaver works as it's supposed to.

Oh yeah...this issue was supposed to be fixed in a patch which you can download here. If the above doesn't work or if you want to use either standby or hibernation, get the patch and see if that fixes it for you.

 

i downloaded the patch but it wouldnt install since i have service pack 1 installed.