Why can't I permanently turn off screensavers?

Hi All,

I've googled for this, looked on the troubleshooting section of Windows XP and found nothing.

Does anyone know why this occurs and how to fix it?

Problem - I don't like screensavers, have none installed bar the ones that come with windows. I have turned off the screensaver options so that 'none' is selected. Yet when I switch my PC back on the setting goes back to the standard default windows XP screensaver? I am thinking that it gets reset whenever Windows downloads updates but am not entirely sure. Has anyone else had a similar problem? It doesn't always do this though.

Thanks,
Matt

Does your account have admin rights? If not, maybe that's why it's doing it. Only other option I know of is to disable it via the registry.

It isn't the screensaver maybe... In CONTROL PANEL, under POWER OPTIONS... when is it set to turn off monitor and HDD? This sometimes acts like a screen saver function.

Yeah it sounds like its just your monitor turning off. I think its set to do that after 20 minutes by default.

If it was admin rights stopping you from doing it, then you wouldn't even be able to get into Control Panel.

Mind you, it wouldnt supprise me if there was a little cookie or whatever that scaned the settings at startup, and if the screensaver was turned off, turned it back on again

Doesn't sound like the monitor is turning off to me.

I don't think it is the monitor as I've disabled all power saving options, and the Windows XP screensaver (the one with the words "Windows XP" which float around the screen) appears. It's more of a minor annoyance than anything else though.

Your best bet is to leave it turned on, but not to appaer for the longest time

Thanks H&K - good tip - I've just set it to wait 9999 minutes before turning on. This is just short of a week the PC would need to be on and unattended for, which is more than enough (one would hope so!)

It could also be a group policy or login script enabling the screensaver, especially if you're logging on to a domain.

If your personal computer startup settings are different when you startup the machine than when you fully shutdown the machine (i.e. unplugging the machine), try some online virus removers and ad removers. Seems strange, as I don't recall that I've had this problem.