Screensaver not starting? Fix it with the "powercfg" command.

YOU "NONE/NONE" GUYS NEED TO CLICK "SHOW MORE" AND READ THIS ENTIRE DESCRIPTION!

Starting at 1:42, this video explains the proper "powercfg" syntax necessary to get your screensaver to kick in when it's supposed to if some process is interfering with it.

In my particular situation, the Adobe Flash Player plugin executable was preventing my system from starting the screensaver.

HOWEVER, If you get "none/none" after executing "powercfg -requests", then type "msconfig" into the "run" box (WIN KEY+R) and put your system into "diagnostic startup" and restart your pc. see if your screensaver kicks in that way. "diagnostic startup" disables programs and services that the system invokes after startup,

if your screensaver kicks in at the expected time when you're in diagnostic mode, that means one of the disabled programs is likely the culprit. unfortunately, this is a tedious way to isolate the problem because you may have disabled near 100 programs and now have to re-enable them one by one and restart after each enable. but, at least it may be a good step in narrowing it down.

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Closed Caption:

so I wake up a couple times last night i
notice that my monitor is on i kept
coming up with excuses in my head is the
White was on maybe it hadn't been 30
minutes or whatever i've set my my
display to go to to go to sleep and
whatever else maybe the cat walked
across the keyboard but I knew I
honestly knew in the back of my head
that something was preventing the
computer from going to sleep
fortunately I've actually run into this
problem before and I knew it probably
had something to do with the adobe flash
player running in my firefox browser but
you know so i made excuses and then this
morning I decided to troubleshoot and I
was right
the one problem is i've reinstalled this
computer recently so I forgot what the
command was and not exactly the windows
command but specifically how to put the
syntax in so that you know will let the
system go to sleep arm i took a look on
the internet you're going to see a lot
of information out there and a lot of
people saying was the most random stuff
people love did you say crap without
actually proving that it works or having
any general idea what's going on so i
made this video i want to show you that
it does actually work and how to be as
specific as possible and isolating the
issue so again I've already indicated
that it's the the adobe flash player now
the UH the browser obviously the flash
players running in the browser but
there's an actual executable for the
flash player that's running so some
people have suggested oh well you need
to stop the browser from preventing the
computer to go to sleep because in their
minds its logical but that doesn't do
anything in reality in reality
specifically have to specify specific
process of specific executable and tell
the computer to you know recognize that
and not let it prevent it from going to
sleep so let's go ahead and get into the
nuts and bolts here the first thing you
have to do is open up your command
prompt and you have to run it is
elevated command prompt otherwise this
is not going to work and we're going to
take a look first at the processes that
are preventing the computer from going
to sleep right now we could do that by
typing power CFG dash requests plural
and you're going to see here that
there's a display process of adobe flash
player and a system driver the high
definition audio device
that theoretically are causing this
system not to go to sleep
one thing I've noticed is that in my
testing I don't even have to specify the
high definition audio device to get the
computer to go to sleep so there's some
windows crappiness quirkiness whatever
you want to call it but i'm gonna show
you
so the first thing I'm going to do is
prove to you that this system is not
going to sleep i'll let this get to 45
55 seconds and then stop moving it
around and then we're going to see that
when we get back to 55 seconds
oh maybe be good if i showed you that
it's actually set up for that so it's
going to personalize screensaver it's
actually set up for 30 minutes that
would have been a long wait so we're
going to stop it in 15 seconds I let it
go around and as you can see I've just
ordered a pile pyro omnidirectional
headworn microphone because this
microphone sitting on my desk every time
I move away you can hear my voice of all
the way over here I've had to record
this video two or three times because of
that so yeah once this thing gets around
2 15 we're going to see that nothing is
going to happen magically in the system
will stay awake as long as that freaking
browser windows open
obviously the workaround will be just
close the browser window but as you can
see my case that wasn't my thought
process and it probably isn't yours if
you're looking at this video I don't
like workarounds I like solutions
so in the words of grandpa here comes to
and nothing happens
obviously we know that something is
preventing the system from going this
something is preventing the system from
going to sleep and we've identified it
so now the question is how do we tell
that executable to not be allowed to
prevent the system from going to sleep
so i'm going to show you how to do that
first you're going to type power CFG
dash requests override and you have to
specify that it's a process because it's
a process and now for the syntactical
part that really make it really matters
here
some people would suggest that you need
to put this entire string in there all
of this you don't need all that crap all
you need is the name of the actual
executable you don't care where that so
in order to do that the first thing you
can do in your command prompt is right
click and go to mark when you do that it
will give you a little box that you can
select am a little bit of text it
doesn't work like in a browser where you
select a bunch of texts as you can see
it kind of just creeps this little
square i'm going to select the first
part of the executable and you press
ENTER to copy it to the clipboard you
cannot just ctrl-v to paste in your
going to get that weird symbol you have
to right click and paste that in and
then I'm going to right-click mark and
get the rest of his name press ENTER and
just paste it in there
alright so now I've got the name of that
actual executable if there was a space
in that name i would need to put quotes
around it
I must not have got that last you need
to put quotes around it but since this
is all one continuous name with
underscores i can just leave it like
this and the most important part is at
the end you have to put display their so
now you can check power CFG dash
requests override and see what's in
there you can see now i have the flash
player plugin . exe and let's say for
some reason you messed it up but you
wanted to remove it or whatever whatever
all you have to do is specify the exact
same thing you did except don't put
display so i'm going to do that and
we'll run request override and you can
see there's nothing in there
so we're going to put it back in their
requests override and verify that it's
in there and now we're going to wait one
minute you're going to see that it's
actually going to work so 35 seconds
when we get back around we're gonna see
my wonderful dream aquarium screensaver
kick in
and of course one of the interesting
things like i mentioned i didn't have to
specify the high definition audio device
I have no idea why this works if anybody
understands it's better than I do I'd
love a explanation update the video or
update the description text include
what's going on here but as of now like
I said I was very specific
I nail down exactly what was preventing
the system from going to sleep and i'm
showing you just that so you'll have
confidence that you can make it work for
your situation
I'm gonna have to change my external IP
address so that people don't try to hack
me over here and as you can see the
screen savers starting after one minute
I get Ally slitting fish and eventually
we'll go through the progression and
this computer will eventually go to
sleep like it's supposed to