Screen Saver Stopped Working

Open an elevated (admin) command prompt and type the following line:

powercfg -lastwake

Also, in power options, click change plan settings, then on the next window click change advanced power settings. In the window that pops up, look for sleep and click the + and then look for wake timers and click the +
is wake timers enabled?

hsehestedt said:

The only other thing that springs to mind is this:
I know that there are some programs that can disable the screensaver and / or prevent the computer from going to sleep while that app is running.
As a quick test to see if some app or service is affecting the screensaver try doing this:
Run MSCONFIG. On the boot tab, select the option to run Safe boot, then reboot. Prior to rebooting you might want to set a low value, like 1 minute, for the screensaver to kick on so you don't have to wait long.
Once done testing, run MSCONFIG again, turn off safe boot and reboot again. Your system will now boot normally again.

Well this seems to be the issue. The screensaver works in safe mode. I'm having trouble finding the guilty party though. I've been turning off processes in the task manager but nothing so far.

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tomdsr said:

Open an elevated (admin) command prompt and type the following line:
powercfg -lastwake
Also, in power options, click change plan settings, then on the next window click change advanced power settings. In the window that pops up, look for sleep and click the + and then look for wake timers and click the +
is wake timers enabled?

All timers in power are turned off. What does powercfg -lastwake do? I do not find any search results for that.

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Bastet said:

Do you have a wireless mouse? I’ve noticed this device can prevent sleep & screensaver from activating.

Wired mouse and keyboard

Interesting. Thanks for the update.

My typical way of isolating these pesky items is by looking at two items:

1) Start by opening Task Manager. Go to the Startup tab. From here you have a few choices. You could simply disable everything here all in one shot (temporarily, for testing), or try disabling a few items at a time, then reboot. With those items disabled, does the screensaver work normally? If so, re-enable one or two items at a time and reboot until you zero in on the troublemaker.

2) If none of those startup items make a difference, then the next step is to look at services. Run MSCONFIG and go to the Services tab. Check the box that says "Hide all Microsoft services". Then, make sure that all the remaining services are checked, click on "Disable all", reboot.

IMPORTANT: I have never had any problem doing this, but it would be just my luck that I suggest this to someone else and find that some critical service being disabled causes a problem. I doubt that would be the case, but I probably should suggest an image backup of the Windows drive first simply out of an abundance of caution .

So, same thing would apply now as for the startup apps. If the screensaver works, try enabling a few services at a time and reboot until you get to a point where it fails again. Once it fails, you know that something in the last group of items you just re-enabled is the troublemaker. Then it's simply a matter of disabling those one at a time till you hit the right one.

Hope this helps!

ryevick said:

Well this seems to be the issue. The screensaver works in safe mode. I'm having trouble finding the guilty party though. I've been turning off processes in the task manager but nothing so far.

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All timers in power are turned off. What does powercfg -lastwake do? I do not find any search results for that.

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Wired mouse and keyboard

i regularly get this with my 22H2 boxes after the overnight updates, it's quite annoying and one of the things that make me hate windows with a burning passion. if the others listed above are not working for you, run system file checker scannow using administrator privileges, and restart. it fixes this for me every time.

Code:

sfc /scannow

i realise i'm replying to an old thread, but I'm doing so because the search "windows screensaver stopped working" gives this page for people who might be looking this, and it's currently about result number 6 for that search.