Screen Saver Not Kicking In

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Folks,

The Screen Saver on my Sony Vaio VGN-FZ11L just isn't kicking in. It's supposed to turn on after 10 mins, but it doesn't. I've tried a few differone ones, they preview OK, but after 10mins they just don't come on.

Does anyone have any idea's as I'm not comfortable leaving the laptop on and no screen saver running.

exzantia

I have no idea why it isn't starting.

But it's very unnecessary anyway, screen savers do nothing on LCD screens except consume energy. You're better off just telling the machine to power the screen off after 10 minutes.

Tom Dunne

exzantia wrote:

But it's very unnecessary anyway, screen savers do nothing on LCD screens except consume energy. You're better off just telling the machine to power the screen off after 10 minutes.

There is the other minor issue of security? Perhaps he wants the screen locked so nobody else can get at it?

There must be another program in the background that is preventing the screen saver from kicking in - do you have programs running in the system tray?

Kintarō Hattori

tom dunne wrote:

There must be another program in the background that is preventing the screen saver from kicking in - do you have programs running in the system tray?

Hi Tom,

There are other programs running in the system tray. I didn't think they'd affect the screensaver though. I'm in work at the moment so will give you guys a list of what's running when I get home.

I tried turning the screen off after 'X' minutes, but that didn't work either.

Kintarō Hattori

OK, so running in the background are:

Bit Torrent
Vaio Updater
Touchpad Properties
Skype
Logitech Internet Handset
AVG Free
Power Indicator
Network Indicator
Sound Properties

ethernet

Teatimer, part of Spybot Search and Destroy, might have blocked the registry from being edited but if your settings are still under the options for Screensaver then they must have been applied.

Do you have any media software, such as WinTV 2000, some media centre software or similar, running which could stop the screensaver from kicking in?

Tom Dunne

eo980 wrote:

OK, so running in the background are:

Bit Torrent
Vaio Updater
Touchpad Properties
Skype
Logitech Internet Handset
AVG Free
Power Indicator
Network Indicator
Sound Properties

It's hard to say. What I would do is set the Screen Saver to jump in after 1 minute and disable each of the above. Then see if the screen saver kicks in.

I would start with Logitech Internet Handset, all the others shouldn't do it.

Another thing that has just occurred to me - some programs have the option to prevent screen savers from kicking in. Check Skype and the Logitech program for such an option.

Kintarō Hattori

Many thanks for everyone's help, especially yourself Tom. I found out that it was the receiver of the notebook mouse that was plugged into the USB port. Just have to instruct the missus now to plug that out when she's done!

Thanks once again folks. It was puzzling me. Still can't figure out why it would happen, but there you go.