Vista continually drops active screen saver
 

Hi all

After my trusty 5-year-old P4 desktop blew its motherboard last Christmas-time, I ordered a shiny new Dell which came with Vista Ultimate (32-bit, SP1). I have to say that, despite my trepidation, most of my fears about Vista have since proved unfounded and I certainly prefer the interface to XP's garish default (I always used the Windows Classic GUI on XP).

However there is one annoying niggle: the screen saver. I set one of the supplied screen savers as active (with the 'lock computer' option on) and all initially seems OK. However, when I come back to the machine the next day (it runs 24/7 so that all the backups/virus checks etc happen overnight) I receive an error message saying that there is no active screen saver and have to set it all up again in the Personalization window. Of course, if I were to leave the room and forget to do this it would leave my user account unlocked for Gadget Minor (aged 6) to wreak havoc to her heart's content.

I have searched these fora and also Googled this problem, and although there appear to be lots of instances of Vista screen savers refusing to work at all - especially where a cordless keyboard and/or mouse is in use (my Dell has both) I can't find anything similar to my problem, where it initially works but then just turns itself off (overnight, it seems).

Has anyone encountered this issue? Anyone know of a fix?

Thanks

Gadget :ok:

Have you tried setting up the screen saver, re-booting and seeing what happens ?

Also, have you got any powersaving modes set ?

Giz

Interestingly I get a similar thing in W7 where it looses all but one picture from the desk top slide show occasionally.

I get that Slideshow problem in 7 too. In fact it's happened from build 6956 to 7048, at which point I gave up running them, in anticipation of RC1. Next month apparently.

I'm glad it's not just me then. :ok:

Yep & not limited to any particular files. The bundled ones do it and so do any of my own pictures. It's a shame as that is a really pleasant feature. Let's hope they iron that one out.

I did report the problem so hopefully it will be sorted.