Screen Saver Setup Trouble

[Bilbo]

A user was switched from Windows 2000 SP4 to Windows XP SP2.
She had a screen saver that ran under Win2K. It was reputedly written
for Windows 3.1 during the Win 95 Beta by Micrografx for Hallmark.

She loves it! She wants it to run under XP.

We haven't been able to get Windows XP to enable it even after using
the original SETUP program. It's as if it's not even on the system.
It appears to have hooked its way into the system by using WIN.INI but
I don't know what else.

Does anyone know if this can be done and if so, how? It's called
"Screen Gallery".

Thanks

 

[Sharon F]

It was reputedly written
for Windows 3.1 during the Win 95 Beta by Micrografx for Hallmark.

That's a really old screensaver. XP screensavers don't even use win.ini.
Neither does XP for that matter. The file is there for backwards
compatibility only.

If there's a way to shoe horn this screensaver in, this page:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_s.htm
would have the details. I only gave it a quick skim but didn't find
anything hopeful. Sorry. Maybe a slower read would turn up something...

Aside: XP's generic display drivers do not have openGL support included (a
technology used by some screensavers and games). If available for the
display hardware, the manufacturer will have included it in their driver
packages. If you get past getting this installed, you may have to leap this
hurdle as well.

 

[Bilbo]

Thanks Sharon.

I'm not a coder -- haven't been since MS-DOS. This particular
screensaver is an .EXE file that's loaded in a folder off the root
directory. The ScreenSaver applet in the desktop dialogue doesn't
allow browsing for a third-party screen-saver. It offers only the XP
built-ins and no others.

This screensaver ran just fine under Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and I don't
understand what would be so very different between that and XP Pro SP2
as regards screen savers. I guess I'll have to roam through the
registry of that old Win2K PC and see what it is that might be buried
away in there. I was thinking there probably wasn't very much since
the program was written for Win3.1 which really had no registry at
all.

I'm just trying to satisfy the user but I have to admit, the screen
saver is kind'a neat.

Thanks again,
B

 

[Brains,None]

Screen Gallery??? hhmm if it's a picture changer and they want their
own pictures, i have a *background* flipper written in Perl that only
requires Perl, one windows module for perl, and ImageMagick...

I use it for my live satpix feed to my background.

Post back if interested, and i'll put it up in a few days on my VAX website.

j.

 

[Sharon F]

Thanks Sharon.

I'm not a coder -- haven't been since MS-DOS. This particular
screensaver is an .EXE file that's loaded in a folder off the root
directory. The ScreenSaver applet in the desktop dialogue doesn't
allow browsing for a third-party screen-saver. It offers only the XP
built-ins and no others.

This screensaver ran just fine under Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and I don't
understand what would be so very different between that and XP Pro SP2
as regards screen savers. I guess I'll have to roam through the
registry of that old Win2K PC and see what it is that might be buried
away in there. I was thinking there probably wasn't very much since
the program was written for Win3.1 which really had no registry at
all.

I'm just trying to satisfy the user but I have to admit, the screen
saver is kind'a neat.

Thanks again,
B

You're welcome, Brian. Since the screensaver is an EXE file (system
screensavers are SCR files), I wouldn't even try to load it via Control
Panel. Instead set XP to none and drop a shortcut to the EXE in Startup
should make it active - that is, if it runs in XP.