Screensaver quit working

I have been using the same screensaver (one of the OE ones) for two years. about a week ago it ceased functioning.

When checking the settings, everything appears to be in order. I have tried changing the time by a minute, applying it and closing but it still doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

 

Screensaver not functional

I too am having trouble with the standard (as supplied) screensavers that come with XP. They just won't turn on after the specified number of minutes.

I thought it might be some other program running in the background that is canceling the screensaver by signaling keyboard or mouse activity during the wait period. But I don't think that is the problem. I say that because if I turn on the screensaver manually with the "preview" function, and don't touch the mouse or keyboard, it will stay on indefinitely.

Something is preventing the screensavers from triggering into its "screensaver" state. I've looked at the Microsoft knowledge site and cannot find anything specifically related to this problem.

Has anyone seen this before, or have any suggestion on how to diagnose?

Terry

 

Terry,

I think you were on the right path thinking something running in the background was keeping the screensaver from starting. Finding the little bugger is a whole different story. One thing you could try is opening the TaskManager and letting your computer sit idle for awhile, then see if there is any activity in the TaskManager. Also listen for the hard drive.
Hopefully we'll get somemore input (and ideas).

B

 

Tried some things

At your suggestion, I opened up the Task Manager and watched the various processes that were jumping up to the top of CPU usage. Then I systematically removed the ones that were jumping up there as follows, and each time reset and reactivated the screensaver. Unfortunately, removing none of these resulted in the screensaver activating itself. It is still inactive:

msmsgs.exe (I'm guessing something to do with Microsoft Messaging). I removed its whole tree, and it rebuilt itself and came back.

RxMon.exe -- Has to do with Roxio DVD software. Took out its tree, no benefit.

CoreCenter.exe -- this is a diagnostic and cpu monitoring software that came with my MSI mainboard. Killing that did not help.

There was one other that I forgot to write down the name of, which was tied to a job/shuttle device for video editing. That seemed like a good possibility since that simulates keyboard activity, and I just put it on after Christmas. Unfortunately, removing it did not help either.

Navapsvc.exe, which is Norton's Antivirus, I cannot get that killed completely, but it seems like that one is unlikely to be the problem. Norton products are usually pretty well done.

By this point I no longer had any processes that were jumping to the top of the list with significant CPU utilization. There are still a lot of active processes, but none of them using much processing.

Any other suggestions?

Terry

 

Found something

I just tried one more thing. Leaving all of the processes turned off that I described in the last message, I then went out and ran the utility called "EndItAll" which shuts down running processes. After it killed everthing, the screensaver worked okay after a minute.

So now I just need to go through by trial and error and find out which process (hopefully only one) that is interupting the screensaver. I'll get back when I find it.

Thanks,

Terry

 

Found it

I was able to isolate the application that was interfering with the screenserver. It was a background process called pvdvserv.exe, which was described as a PowerDVD RC SERV, and came from the Roxio DVD suite. I took it out of the registry using HiJack This, and it seems to be staying away.

Interestingly, the process was not showing using any time in the Task Manager. The only way I found it was using the EndItAll program, to turn off processes that showed at that level, one at a time.

Thanks for the advise. I seem to be okay now with the screensaver running.

Terry

 

Terry,

Glad you got it straightened out, trying to 'isolate' a problem like this can be a real *pain*. Good job.

B