Unwanted Suppression of a Windows Screen Saver

[John-W]

I find the object handling features of PTE V5.6 extremely useful for implementing special-purpose interactive user interface applications. (Not necessarily connected with slide shows!) However, some PC applications do require the standard Windows screen saver function, including password entry to resume use after the PC is left unattended. Unfortunately running a PTE .exe file prevents a Windows screen saver from running. (Previewing a project in PTE has the same effect).

Could anyone help with the following questions:

1. Is suppression of the Windows screen saver function during PTE application exection a design feature of PTE?

2. Is there any way in PTE to override this suppression?

3. Is there a Windows registry solution to prevent an application from suppressing the execution of a screen saver?

Windows 98/ Windows XP screen saver enable/disable anomaly

Whilst investigating this problem I found an anomaly between Windows 98 and XP.

With W98 and XP if a screen saver is enabled (in Display Properties) and then a PTE application is previewed or executed the screen saver does not run. However, if a screen saver is re-enabled after a PTE application has been started, then the screen saver will run.

In W98 Display Properties when a previously-defined screen saver has been suppressed it is reported as none, ie. W98 Display Properties correctly reports that a screen saver is being suppressed well handled! When the suppressing application is stopped the original screen saver is automatically restored.

However, XP Display Properties does not report that a defined screen saver has been suppressed. But if a screen saver is being suppressed it can still be re-activated, eg. by modifying the wait time.

[Conflow]

John W,

If my memory serves me correctly the Screen-Saver (suppression) utility was added sometime after PTE.4.48.

and it stands to reason why it's there,example:-

1)

Assume you have the PC setup so it reverts to Screensaver after 5.minutes of PC inactivity, then this setting

would normally 'blank-out' a live running PTE-Show. In the past the PC-User had to go into Display-Properties

and set sufficient 'delay-time' to accomodate the longest expected PTE Show.

2)

It seems from PTE 4.49 onwards this is no longer necessary and thank god for that ~ I dont know how many times

I got caught out in the middle of Presentation when the PC went into 'Stand-by Mode'......Red face and surrounded

by laughter, not a nice situation at all !!

Hope this helps,

Brian (Conflow)

[John-W]

Thanks for your replies.

Brian: I can sympathise with your explanation of why the screen saver became permanently disabled in order to avoid embarassment during public presentations! But it's easy to set screen saver to 'none' and leave it like that.

Tom: your workaround should do the trick - many thanks. (I'm not familiar with autoit so I'll have to experiment).

I don't think that disabling/suppressing the Windows screen saver should be automatically assumed by PTE. There will always be someone (eg me!) who prefers to have control of such functions.

I suggest the screen saver should be disabled by default, but with an 'Allow Windows screen saver' flag available in Project Options > Screen.

[John-W]

Toms solution seemed simple, until I tried it!

My PTE user interface application is a single slide with menu buttons. Thus Project Options > Show Settings is set to When show ends keep last slide. (And this is when I'd like the Screen Saver to come on in the normal manner).

Concerning running Toms Autoit Enable Screen Saver script from within the PTE project, Project Options>More Run application/slide show on exit waits for an explicit exit, rather than running the application when the shows last slide ends. So the Screen Saver cannot be enabled during the show!

The other problem is that PTE does not in fact use the ScreenSaveActive flag in the registry. If the flag is set by defining a Screen Saver in Windows Display Properties then PTE does not clear the flag when a project is executed, ie. the flag remains set indicating that the screen saver is active when in fact it has been disabled by PTE!

I Suspect PTE uses an API to disable the Screen Saver. But I would have expected this Windows mechanism to always preserve the correct status of the registry flag. Experimenting with another Screen Saver scenario Windows Media Player - this behaves in the same way, ie. the Screen Saver is disabled whilst playing (unless defined otherwise in Options), yet ScreenSaveActive is not cleared to indicate this.

It seems that working around the PTE Screen Saver Disable feature is not easy! (An 'Allow Screen Saver' flag in Project Options>Screen is the logical solution).

[Conflow]

John,

If you refer back to my original #2 Post above and then look at the 'attachment' below

this might give you some clues as to what's going on. In my opinion any 'Scripts' would

have to interact with the API-Power-Settings application and alter the API to suit your

requirements.

Hope this may help...

Brian (Conflow)