My Vista screen saver will not start up.

[Fred]

My Vista screen saver stopped working. It had been working then it just
stopped. Now the laptop just times out to a black screen after 20 Minutes.
I have the screen saver set to come on at 5 minutes. I do not have a mouse
of any kind attached to the computer.

[Francois]

Do you have the sidebar with the analog clock? That stopped my screen saver
from coming on.. I presume you know why the screen goes to sleep after the
20 minutes though :-)

Are you sure that's the reason? My screensaver wouldn't start either and I
restarted and it worked. All with the analog clock gadget in the sidebar.

The next time I played around with the Mobility center and put it in
presentation mode and took it out of it though, the screen saver didn't
trigger.

Are you still telling me it's the Analog Clock?

Wow. I just re-read my message and I have no idea why it came out that bad.
Please let me rephrase my reply:

Are you sure the analog clock gadget is the reason why the screensaver won't
trigger? In my case, the screen saver wouldn't turn on after I played around
with the Mobility Center and put the system in Presentation mode and took it
out.

After a quick restart, the screen saver triggered fine. Are you positive
it's the analog clock in the sidebar?

[Fred]

Thank you for your input. I had thought it might be something in the sidebar
causing screen saver not to start but it had worked previously when I had the
sidebar turned on. I do understand the reason why the screen goes to sleep.

I had previously shut down the laptop and the screensaver did not work upon
startup. However last night the computer downloaded an update from
microsoft. Today the screensaver is working. I am not sure if it is a
coincidence or if the download repaired the problem. Thank you for your
help!!!

[elbornavatar]

I don't run the vista side bar. I hate wasting desktop space to it. However there is something to that Analog clock. One time i found a icon of a analog clock, and not knowing what it was, it started both the sidebar and the clock. Discovering what it was, I just as quickly closed the sidebar. But now ever since then, my screen saver refuses to start!

Rebooting, changing the time span at which how quickly the screen saver should start, has no effect! Even changing to a different screen saver has no effect.
Now what?