Screensaver not working in Windows 8.1

The suggestion from Soulrebelno may have merit but when I tried it I found I had 22 processes running and I had no way of knowing which one was a problem.  Should 22 processes be running at the same time - and some of the duplicates???   I could not see any of the processes that I could put my finger on and say that is the one with a problem and I did not want to experiment by going one at a time to see if that corrected the problem because there is too much that could go wrong.   Does anyone have a clue as to what each of these processes does and which ones could possibly affect the screen saver?   Anyone with any clues or references that would help me would be appreciated.

Dean V. Dannewitz

Hi Dean,

You will have lots of system processes running, and some duplicates, it's normal, my computer has them as well, but they are all running at 0% CPU. You want to find the background process or processes that are using your CPU when your computer is at idle. I found the best way is by clicking on the CPU column header in Resource Monitor, that will order the processes by CPU usage, the process that uses the most CPU is then at the top of the list, the order tends to bounce around a bit so close all unnecessary programs before you start.

I found that PSVEngine.exe (OKI PrintSuperVision printer utility) was using 3% CPU usage at idle, it was incompatible with Windows 8.1 and just wouldn't shut down. Once I had uninstalled it and and rebooted it solved the problem.

If anything is using the CPU in the background then your computer will not go into idle mode because it thinks you are still using it.

Keep the faith!

The suggestion from Soulrebelno may have merit but when I tried it I found I had 22 processes running and I had no way of knowing which one was a problem.  Should 22 processes be running at the same time - and some of the duplicates???   I could not see any of the processes that I could put my finger on and say that is the one with a problem and I did not want to experiment by going one at a time to see if that corrected the problem because there is too much that could go wrong.   Does anyone have a clue as to what each of these processes does and which ones could possibly affect the screen saver?   Anyone with any clues or references that would help me would be appreciated.

Dean V. Dannewitz

Hi,

In a nutshell: try checking if there are any background processes running which stops your computer from going into idle mode.

I had the same problem on my laptop and thought it was a bug in Windows 8.1. After having a good think about the problem I finally sorted it out myself. On my computer it turned out that there was a background process running all the time, the process should have stopped when not in use but it didn't. I had bought a new OKI printer and installed the OKI PrintSuperVision (PSVEngine.exe) printer software that came with it. Unfortunately for me PSVEngine.exe was buggy and was not compatible with Windows 8.1, but I didn't know that at the time. I uninstalled the OKI PrintSuperVision software and rebooted the computer, et voilà, problem fixed! The Windows screen saver and all the power options are now running perfectly. The OKI PrintSuperVision software has since been updated and is supposed to be compatible with Windows 8 (x64), but I haven't tested it yet.

I found the running process by going to: Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Administrative Tools > Resource Monitor > CPU Tab. It showed that the OKI PrintSuperVision software was still running and consuming about 3% CPU usage, even though it had been terminated? It was stopping my computer from going into idle mode, therefore the screen saver and the power options just wouldn't kick in.

I've tested it and my computer is now working perfectly even after a number of Windows updates.

Hope it helps.

UPDATE:

Based on my experience, I personally think this issue is related to a hardware/driver/software problem rather than a Windows 8.1 OS bug, although some people disagree.

SYSINTERNALS

Microsoft provides a bunch of troubleshooting utilities called Sysinternals which may help trace the problem, the information is here: Windows Sysinternals Suite

I have been a party to this thread for a long time and am still interested in solving the problem of not having the screen saver working in Windows 8.0 or 8.1.  Apparently this is not a universal problem because others have not reported it, so it has to be that the configuration set in the registry has been corrupted by some means and the only real solution could be uninstalling Windows 8.0 or 8.1 and reinstalling a new download.  But that takes extreme measures that are not usually accepted by the average user and therefore is not the solution.  If the expert programmers at Microsoft cannot or are unwilling to give this problem priority, then I think we are stuck with it.  It is not really a major problem and everyone can get by without using the screen saver.   However, when Microsoft issues a new version and advertises all its virtues so they can sell lots of programs, the buyer should expect to receive what they think they are buying. 

So, since there does not seem to be a workable solution available, I think it is time to move on and avoid the screen saver issue and perhaps change over to an operating system other than Microsoft.

Geethu, thanks for the response.  I did as you had asked and under step 1 Power, it showed a response of "Issues found.  Screen saver is enabled - not fixed with an x in the red circle.

I then went on to item 2 and followed that as well, but it did not change anything. 

Thanks so far

Gary