Question : Screen Saver Won't Come On and Monitor Won't Power Down

Intel Core 2 Duo on ASUS P5WHD MB, New XP Pro install about 10 months ago, fully patched, Symantec AV Corporate 10, Dual monitors using UltraMon on NVIDIA 7950GT. No users on this box, only admin install on home network.

I started having this problem a few months ago. I had always set my screen saver to come on after 30 minutes and the monitor(s) to power down after 1 hour (along with hard drives) in XP PM settings. Now neither screen saver nor monitor will act accordingly. I don't think my hard drives are powering down either. I haven't been able to tie it to any particular software that I loaded. Here are my troubleshooting steps to date:

1) I have looked for any software that might inhibit screen saver or PM options (Like CD burning and disk defrag) to no avail.
2) I have unloaded every service and program that XP doesn't need to run to no avail, like Diskkeeper, Scanner, Mouse Software, Picasa etc. Essentially nothing left in the system tray.
3) I have dual boot to Vista and all PM and screen savers work there, reducing the probability of a hardware problem.
4) Updated to latest MB BIOS
5) Ran SFC to check system file integrity.
6) Attempted overlay install of XP, but it failed and I had to restore image from backup.

The curious thing is that during my testing and troubleshooting, the screen saver DID come on randomly a couple of times, but I could never repeat the circumstances. I have about 75 GB of software installed and want to avoid a reinstall if possible, but I don't want my monitors or hard drives to wear unnecessarily.

Any help appreciated. 500 points for correct solution.

Thanks,
Danny Milla

Answer : Screen Saver Won't Come On and Monitor Won't Power Down

Does the problem occur in Safe mode, too?  If not:  In Windows 98/ME/XP, you can choose which programs are run at startup by using the Microsoft Configuration utility:  click on the Start button, choose Run, type in MSCONFIG (doesn't need to be all capitals), click OK.  Choose the Startup tab, deselect programs to run at startup by removing the check mark.  In Windows 9x/ME, you may need to disable just about everything except Explorer, ScanRegistry and SysTray.  In Windows XP, just click on the button for Disable All. Reboot and see if the problem goes away.  If it does then re-enable the startup programs one (or a few) at a time, reboot, and when the problem occurs again, there is your culprit.  If you have a great number of apps to narrow down on in trying to track down the culprit, do it instead by dividing up the loading programs into successively smaller halves:  disable half of them; if the problem doesn't go away, then the offending app is within the other half, so divide that group into half; or if the problem does go away, then the disabled group contains the offender, so again narrow down by dividing in half.  

In Windows XP: If the problem continues to come up with all startup programs disabled, then it is probably a driver or service.  You can click on the Services tab in MSCONFIG, click on the button for Hide All Microsoft Services, leaving only third-party services displayed, then try turning them off in the same way you did for startup programs.  Finally, if third-party services are eliminated from being the cause of the problem, you could try narrowing down on Microsoft services in the same way.