Screen Saver Ghosts!!!

Hello....Does anyone know why my screen saver start up time would change on its own. I have it set to go on in 2 minutes. Somehow it keeps changing to 180 minutes and always 180 minutes. I asked everyone in our house and nobody touches it....Thank you.

 

Just as a starter......

Please ignore most of the information in this past post link. It may overwhelm you with info overload. The main problem or focus for the whole post was used for reference when dealing with greyed out options. This is not your quest but the hkey and value you are interested in is included. Focus on the setting as mentioned below and ignore the rest.......
http://windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=46881&highlight=screensaver+idle+time

What does this hkey and value reflect in yours?
Screen saver timeout
KEY: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Wind ows\Control Panel\Desktop
STRING: ScreenSaveTimeOut = value in seconds

Description
Specifies how much user idle time must elapse before the screen saver is launched.

When configured, this idle time can be set from a minimum of 1 second to a maximum of 86400 seconds, or 24 hours. If set to zero, the screen saver will not launch.

This policy setting has no effect under any of the following circumstances:

If the policy setting is disabled or not configured.
If the wait time is set to zero.
If the Activate Screen Saver policy setting is enabled.
If neither the Screen saver executable name policy setting nor the Screen Saver tab of Display in Control Panel on the client computer specifies a valid, existing screensaver program on the client.
When not configured, whatever wait time is set on the client through the Screen Saver tab of Display is used. The default is 15 minutes.
===========
In retrospect I probably could have pulled a better link out of the "Past Post Archives ", there was more to choose from, but one tends to use links they are familiar with. How much more familiar can you get then a link that you participated in (speaking of myself)?

===========
In an effort to be thorough and not knowing if this question is applicable...are there any other variables we should consider? For example; is this just a plain windows standard screensaver, a downloaded themed screensaver, are you using some 3rd party program that allows screensavers to be switched on a schedule? Forgive my garbled thoughts here, I'm just thinking that there may be a chance that this theme's options/settings are being over ridden, changed or controlled by another application or tweaker using it's own *.ini file OR I'm not thinking at all. I may not have had enough coffee this morning to form coherent thoughts let alone verbalize them....babble babble...as I head for the coffee pot

 

Thanks Ann....So far it's working and my start up stays at 2 minutes. Not sure exactly what fixed it because I did a few things but your advice helped. Thanks again.....Ron

 

Your most welcome Ron. As long as your a happy camper and the problem has vanished. Thanks for keeping this post updated with the final outcome. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard "I'm not sure what I did but it's fixed now "..... it comes from my own mouth more than I care to admit