Windows 11 Screensaver / Display Sleep functions not working

Anonymous
2021-12-31T21:32:41+00:00

A few weeks ago, I can't remember exactly when it occurred (May have been after installing W11) my screensaver and display sleep functions just completely stopped working. I have tried every trick in the book. I have updated my BIOS and chipset drivers. Powercfg -requests shows an audio stream running from realtek, I tried overriding it but didn't solve anything. I confirmed every power option setting is correctly enabled. Basically I've spent extensive time googling and troubleshooting this to no avail.

The one thing that did fix it was running the DISM restore commands in CMD Prompt, however, it only works temporarily for the initial reboot after running that command, and then it stops working again if I reboot a 2nd time.

What can I do to fix this problem?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Display and graphics

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-08-13T16:16:03+00:00

    I disabled by screensaver so I could leave Half Life Blue Shift running while I made breakfast this morning for a record simultaneous users attempt that someone organized. I left my computer unattended while running Half Life Blue Shift and when I returned an hour later my screens were black and off! I moved my mouse and everything woke up as expected with the game still running.

    I'll do some more testing, but this may be a bug with the screensaver & locking behavior in Windows 11 22H2 build 22621.2134

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-08-12T20:55:06+00:00

    I dunno.. I started killing apps that were running in the background. Things like the Microsoft store (Which everytime I accidently hit it, came up with a warning that I was in the Arabic version for some reason or another). I shut down Steam. I shut down my scanner. I shut down my 2 external Hard drives. I had the free version of Malwarebytes, and removed the icon in the taskbar (which thankfully removed the constant nagging) Mine is working.. finally. But no thanks to MS support.... or the hundreds of pages I've been to. And there are still more out there that need a solution.

    I've set my screensaver to anything from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. I've set power off to my screen everything from 2 minutes to 30 minutes. I've set screen saver to require logging back into windows and to not log into windows. It's working NOW finally, but WHY is it so hard for them to send out an update to fixes this?

    Every page I've visited says the same thing. Your screen saver doesn't work with windows 11?? Well turn it on... (duh)

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-12T18:07:24+00:00

    This all started when I upgraded my laptop to Windows 11 from Windows 10. Everything worked great till then. I am not a gamer or have many programs running in the background. I have virtually given up!

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-12T14:40:31+00:00

    I got excited when i saw your observation, but then I realized my computer has this problem even if Steam is not running in the background. The only other programs that actively run in my background are Focusrite software for my microphone, Riot Vanguard, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Nvidia drivers, GeForce Experience, and TeamViewer.

    The failure for my computer to lock, activate the screensaver, and turn off the display is a relatively new behavior starting sometime over the last several months.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-08-10T21:07:04+00:00

    Ok, beats me. My computer bilinked shortly after that, and my screensaver locked up. On 24 hours a day unless I manually turned my monitor off. Went back, Redid everything on my UPS, my scanner, my network connection. Tweaked all my power settings, and my screen saver settings and suddenly, it decided to start working again.

    Then one day, my Grandson came in and asked if he could play a game on my computer that I've had for years. So I said sure.... and my screensaver died again. So I tried something...

    The game he was asking about is from STEAM. So he starts the game and Steam starts up in the background to see if there were any updates. I turn steam off and suddenly everything is back to normal.

    Might be it, might be something else, but it seems like if you have a program that continually checks in, that Might be the source. All this started right after an update to Steam.

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