Friday 14 May 2021

After Dark 4.0 in Win 10: screensaver being reset to "None"

Installing After Dark 4.0 in Win 7/10

On my new computer (win 10 of course) I frequently encounter the following problem: the screensaver, after a while, resets to "None" (no screensaver) in the screensaver setting. You can explicitly go to the setting and set the AD screensaver again, but that is a waste of time. 

After some investigating I found that this is again something that is lost in compatibility mode.

If you go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop, you will see the default path for the current screensaver. If your screensaver was reset to "None", then the path is likely

C:\WINDOWS\system32\AFTERD~1.SCR

but it turns out that the screensaver was installed in SysWOW64!

The simplest solution is then to copy the .scr file also into system32, and that worked immediately for me without further efforts required.

Edit (16/7/2021): I found that leaving the screensaver in SysWOW64 causes all sorts of weird stuffs: the screensaver automatically triggers when you move the mouse to the right-top corner (while Windows does not have hot corners by default), and the screensaver triggers somehow when you are typing password in the lock screen blocking you from logging on. Just make sure the screensaver only stays in System32 and everything will be fine.

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