Windows 7 Screensaver not kicking in – fixed
Had an interesting troubleshooting session this afternoon on a Windows7 pc that was no longer having the screensaver kick in. After checking the screensaver settings were being deployed via group policy, disabling wake on lan and also preventing the network card from waking up the computer/allowing the computer to be shut down, the problem still persisted. Unplugging the wireless mouse (that was a new addition by the user and not the original supplied mouse) didn’t help either. In the end installing the latest intellipoint software and rebooting the machine fixed the problem. Just installing the software didn’t help.
It was nice that Windows7 had automatically found drivers, but it obviously needed the full software installed to work completely.
Subsequently we found a message popping up on the client pc that said the wireless signal strength was low – so it was probably the mouse trying to check in that was making the computer think activity was occurring on the pc.
14. November 2010 at 10:49 pm :
INCREDIBLE!! Ive wasted almost 2 hours messing with this machine, with the same exact issue!! Installing the Intellipoint software and rebooting fixed the issue. Thanks!!
20. November 2010 at 1:27 pm :
Awesome. Fixed mine too! THANKS!
26. November 2010 at 4:45 am :
Fixed … many thanks !
Note to self : check all available MS updates !!
9. March 2011 at 8:48 pm :
Fixed!! Thank you, why couldn’t microsoft answer the question so successfully?
WELL DONE
22. March 2011 at 9:20 am :
[...] the internet found a couple of interesting possibilities. A wireless mouse issue causing “activity” to occur preventing the screensaver from coming on. I don’t have a wireless mouse. Fortunately [...]
9. December 2011 at 5:16 pm :
After reading about the problem being caused by the optical mouse, I installed the optional update that was listed in my Windows Update screen for the wireless mouse. It installed Intellipoint 8 and that solved my problem of my screen saver not kicking in.
THANKS for posting your solution.