Screen Saver Stopped Working

I know there are some older post about this issue but I wanted to create a current post.

I have no idea what changes occurred to cause this but my Windows 10 Pro screen saver no longer activates. Yes it is turned on, there are no new peripherals, the mouse & keyboard have not been modified, the power settings have not been changed and I reinstalled the latest graphic drivers.

I did run an SFC scan and it stated files were repaired but still no screen saver. I also ran DISM.

Ideas?

is it in presentation mode?
do you or have you changed the sleep timer?

rebelyell said:

is it in presentation mode?
do you or have you changed the sleep timer?

no & no

Ghot said:

I'm not a screensaver type, but time wise... make sure the BIOS time/date match the Windows time/date.
If it doesn't... weird things happen.

Times match.

@ryevick,

Forgive me if you have already checked these settings, I just want to make certain to go over the fundamentals here.

First, open Control Panel and with "View by" set to either small icons or large icons, select "Power Options".



To the right of your selected power plan, click on "Change plan settings".



Take note of the values for "Turn off the display" AND "Put the computer to sleep".



Go to your screensaver settings. The amount of time shown in the "Wait" box MUST be less than both the "Turn off the display" AND "Put the computer to sleep" values that you noted before or you will never see the screensaver. As a simple test, you might try setting this to just one minute to see if the screensaver kicks in.

hsehestedt said:

@ryevick,

Forgive me if you have already checked these settings, I just want to make certain to go over the fundamentals here.

First, open Control Panel and with "View by" set to either small icons or large icons, select "Power Options".



To the right of your selected power plan, click on "Change plan settings".



Take note of the values for "Turn off the display" AND "Put the computer to sleep".



Go to your screensaver settings. The amount of time shown in the "Wait" box MUST be less than both the "Turn off the display" AND "Put the computer to sleep" values that you noted before or you will never see the screensaver. As a simple test, you might try setting this to just one minute to see if the screensaver kicks in.

All set fine. I've tried a 1 minute screensaver test and 5 minute turn off display test, neither one works.

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.