Screensaver in Win98 causing system lockups

[AlwaysUp]

Recently, I have come to my trusty Win98se box to find that the screensaver is frozen. I cannot Ctrl-Alt-Del and get system to reboot. I have to system reset or hardboot to get Windows back up. Is this a memory management problem? Anybody know of a fix?

[Force Flow]

Which screensaver are you using? I hope you're not using one of the desktop theme screensavers that comes with windows. (underwater, baseball, jungle, etc.) They seem to lock up a lot of systems for some odd reason.

[AlwaysUp]

Actually it is the Text set to system time that floats around the desktop, but I have had other standard ones like 3D Pipes do it too.

[Force Flow]

Hmm... That is quite odd.

In that case, would it be the video card? Or perhaps the drivers? DirectX?

Questions for you: What version of DirectX do you have? (I doubt this will be a DirectX issue, though).
Do you have the latest drivers for the Video card?
Have you always had this problem, or did it start just all of a sudden?
If all of a sudden, did you uninstall or install any programs around the time that this problem started happening?

[TwoRails]

I've noticed problems with the Advanced power management settings and screensavers. To test this, just go into Desktop Properties (right click on desktop) and set both the Monitor and Hard drive settings to Never. The system may not go to sleep this way, but it usually fixes the lock up problem.

HTH

TwoRails

[Force Flow]

Hadn't thought of that, TwoRails. Would it be the system going to sleep or the HDD set to turn off be doing it?

[TwoRails]

Hi force_flow2002

Ya, that's what I've experienced in at least several machines, including one on my vacation. The only way it would come "alive" after the screensaver kicked in, then the sleep stuff kick in was to hit the Space bar or Enter key, then wiggle the mouse. If you wiggled the mouse first, it would stay locked up. I put the monitor and HD to "Never" and the problem went away. The same for my personal system.

TwoRails

[AlwaysUp]

I have the machine set up for Always on and never on all three options. But the directX issue is interesting. It occurs to me that the old TNT2 card I have most likely does not have support for the DirectX 8 that I went to about 8-10 months ago. The card is a Diamond Viper II Z200 AGP card and They aren't spending anytime on updated drivers, that's for sure. I think S3 kinda sorta supports the legacy stuff Diamond used to make but.....may be time to upgrade that solid but kinda tired vid card..Ya think?

[AlwaysUp]

I dunno....I was really hoping to put my dough into a All-in-Wonder card but I wouldn't want to put one of those in this system.

[GaryRouth]

Interesting topic here: kinda ageless.

Another thing to look for are any recent changes: anything new in sysconfig "StartUp"? Strange new versions of config.sys, or autoexec.bat? Lovely new viral blooms? Who knows, maybe spyware using up resources trying to dial home at odd hours while the innocent screensaver masks it's activity?

I have a card very similiar to yours (the Viper 330) - S3 doesn't update much of anything for them, which is too bad: they're nice little cards for old P233mmx boards.

Hmm...one other thing about the Power Management stuff. You've got the Windows side of it to Always On and Never: how did you set it in the Bios? To "Disabled", to "Use ACPI" or?

Curious to see how this turns out.
. . . Gary

[AlwaysUp]

Dunno...I'll check you back.