Trouble ending screen saver on shutdown

[Cliff Lewis]

For months, every time I try to shut down Windows, I get a dialog
titled "Screen Saver" with the message "Ending program. Please wait."
It always fails to end the program, and I have to click on the "End
now" button. I have already tried uninstalling the screen saver and
reinstalling the latest version. (I got the message even with the
program uninstalled.) Any suggestions on how to fix it? I am running
the Psychedelic Screen Saver (Synthesoft) on Win XP Pro SP2.

Thanks,
Cliff Lewis

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

For months, every time I try to shut down Windows, I get a dialog

titled "Screen Saver" with the message "Ending program. Please wait."
It always fails to end the program, and I have to click on the "End
now" button. I have already tried uninstalling the screen saver and
reinstalling the latest version. (I got the message even with the
program uninstalled.) Any suggestions on how to fix it? I am running
the Psychedelic Screen Saver (Synthesoft) on Win XP Pro SP2.

You can enable the Auto End Task feature in Windows XP to get rid of
this annoyance. Do this:

Start > Run> type in regedit.exe and hit Enter

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Desktop

By default, AutoEndTasks is off, or set to zero. Double click and set
it to 1.

Reboot.

Load Windows and now try your shutdown and see what happens.

Hope it helps.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Cliff Lewis]

Thanks for the suggestion. That would certainly get rid of the
annoyance, although it strikes me as treating the symptom instead of
the disease. Is it worth the effort to try to find out what is causing
the malfunction?

Cliff

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

Thanks for the suggestion. That would certainly get rid of the

annoyance, although it strikes me as treating the symptom instead of
the disease. Is it worth the effort to try to find out what is causing
the malfunction?

If I had to guess, it's the answer most would give: poor coding. You
mention the message says "ending program", is this screen saver an
..EXE or a .SCR? Many 3rd part screen savers are coded as an EXE
instead of SCR so they just run in the background as a program.
There's no cure for this disease (poor coding).

- Thee Chicago Wolf