Windows 10 keeps disabling my screensaver on its own

Windows 10 keeps automatically disabling my screensaver and setting it to "none".

About once a week, I find that my screensaver that I made with InstantStorm does not activate after five minutes has passed. I then check my screensaver settings and found that my screensaver reverted to "none". I then proceed to change it back to the My Little Pony screensaver that I made—only for Windows 10 to change it back to "none" in a week or so.

I Googled the problem but nothing relevant came up. Google did not even provide next word suggestions after 'Windows 10 keeps disabling my' "screensaver was NOT even in the drop down list and when I typed 'screensaver' anyway, all I got was results pertaining to Windows disabling the screen, NOT the screensaver.

This is on a Dell Optiplex 790 tower

Does anybody know what the problem could be?

Nothing definite but what version of Windows 10 are you running, V1909 or V2004. Could be bug in V2004, I did say could be.


When did this start?


Do you have any cleaners / privacy or optimization tools running? If so can you suspend them long enough to see if they are cause.

I am on 1909 and no, I do not have any cleaners or optimizers. I had Avast for a while but recently uninstalled it because it prevented Bluestacks from recognizing that hardware virtualization was enabled (It is a thing with Avast according to Google) but it has been an issue long before I uninstalled Avast.

Worth the ask.


While back work with someone and their virtualization was overriding power options. Wonder if you are looking at something similar. Not sure how you could test.

No, because I have only had Bluestacks installed and Avast uninstalled for a week now. Before then, I did not play around with hardware virtualization. It is my older sister who uses Bluestacks on that PC and my main has my account on it.

I wonder if it is possible to monitor, long term, and flag when the registry value is changed. Then at least you would know what you were doing when it occurred.


Just to get it straight in my mind.


This is a shared device, you and your sister?

Not really a shared device. It is my device, she only uses Bluestacks on it because her computer cannot handle it and as I said, my main (different) computer already has my Bluestacks.

I know that it is not her disabling the screensaver because it has been an issue long before I installed Bluestacks for her. I mentioned that Bluestacks has been on this a week now, that is how long she has been using it

You could disable changing it using

Enable or Disable Changing Screen Saver - TenForumsTutorials

There are more screen saver tutorials [see Windows 10 Tutorial Index] but I think that is the most relevant one.

Denis