screensaver not working with two monitors (extended)

Just moved, and as part of rebirth in a new space, have implemented an old screensaver I really like as a nostalgia trip. Yes, paradoxes abound. Anyhow, it works great by itself on the laptop. When I hook up another (bigger) monitor for real work, if I duplicate the screens, the screensaver still works and shows on both monitors. But if I extend the monitors instead (which of course is the actual intent), suddenly the screensaver stops working. The computer will reach the time limit at which point the screensaver is supposed to be displayed, but instead the monitors will both go dark for a second or two, then just redisplay their actual workaday screens. I looked for solutions and found Screen Saver not working with external monitor - Microsoft Q&A but it's no help; aside from the usual suspects, the only real suggestion it has is "Make sure the power plan you are using has the screen saver enabled and that it's set to activate after a specific period of inactivity." Two problems with this suggestion:

1) there is no option in Settings | System | Power & battery that offers any option whatsoever to manage a screensaver in any manner; screensavers simply aren't mentioned there.
2) my power-plan settings work just fine for the screensaver as long as I don't specifically choose the Display option to "Extend these displays".

As a result of these issues, when I look at the rest of the options in Settings | System | Power & battery, I have no idea what might be good to change, especially since I've got everything set to support best performance, not energy savings. I almost never take this laptop anywhere. It's currently my main office computer so it just stays put with the adapter plugged, so I don't need to worry about the battery running out, and I've arranged the power settings accordingly. The only setting I thought might have an impact was "Turn my screen off after", which I originally had set to Never (sleep also set to Never). So I have now set those to the same amount of time as the screensaver is set to. But it doesn't help. The only difference with this setting is that the displays don't pop back up with the normal desktop screen; instead they just stay dark. Either way the screensaver doesn't appear.

Any thoughts?

P.S. Yes, I know I don't need a screensaver with modern monitors, and I know it burns a bit of extra juice, which impels some folks to become screensaver-shamers. Apologies to the planet, but I love this old screensaver and I want to run it for at least a few months in my new digs. If you're a screensaver-shamer and I'm making you want to scream, please feel free to let 'er rip there at your own screen, and then instead of posting to wag the finger at me or any kind respondents attempting to solve my problem, pass on to some other thread. Thank you.

A screensaver is a program. If it's really old it may simply lack the ability to support multi monitors. There's no way to fix that unless you have the source code and can implement multi monitor support

This is the fairly well-known Windows 98 post-release SciFi theme screensaver. They were supporting multiple monitors by then, so that shouldn't be the problem. Good point, though, which we can thereby officially eliminate unless there's some difference in the multi-monitor support between 9x and 11 which would account for the issue.

Well back then you had much smaller, lower resolution monitors and as far as I know most people didn't have multiple monitors

To manage the screensaver settings in Windows (you seemed to not know where these settings are located), go to Settings > Personalization > Lock Screen > Screen Saver.

Also, you might want to make this change:

How to Alter the Lock Screen Timeout

By default, the lock screen times out after only one minute. This means that you will not have available for viewing any information that you have chosen to display on the lock screen, nor will a screen saver be displayed.

To change this, perform these steps:

Open the registry and navigate to this location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99\8EC4B3A5-6868-48c2-BE75-4F3044BE88A7

Double-click the “attributes” value and change it from a “1” to a “2”.

Next, open the Advanced settings of the Power Options Control panel app. A quick way to get there is to press Win + R, type in “control powercfg.cpl,,1,”, press ENTER.

Select Display > Console lock display off timeout

Modify to your liking.

@schmibble,

If you are still having difficulties with the screensaver, do you have a link where that screensaver can be obtained? I'd be happy to try and see if I can do anything with it on a dual monitor rig.

I don't think power settings have anything to do with the issue. As long as you set the screen to never sleep, it should not. I would see at the screensaver settings if there is a maximum resolution that I can set or whatever. In worst case you might be able to restrict the screensaver to one monitor only.

@spapakons, good suggestions. I hadn't looked at the Preferences subdialog for a long time so I did open it up, but the options are minimal, no way to specify just one monitor. You can specify a limited number of resolutions, so I experimented with that but it didn't make any difference. And that's pretty much it for settings.

@hsehestedt, response much appreciated. I will take you up on your kind offer to see what you can do with the file.

Unfortunately I had already found and made the registry change you recommend (Impossible to use your own screensaver on the lock screen?) . Currently for testing I have the Screen Saver Settings dialog "Wait _____ minutes" set to 1 minute and the "Console lock display off timeout" in the power dialog set to 4 minutes when plugged in. I did have it at 1 minute for battery, and I changed that to 4 as well but didn't make any difference. So we're back to square one.

I downloaded the screensaver two years ago. The version I'm using should be https://www.screensaversplanet.com/files/help/scifi_screensaver_setup.exe ; it's from thread Windows 98 Plus! science fiction screensaver . The download might be more reliable if clicked from the thread's link than from my direct link (I just verified that the download is still valid, but it initially failed and I had to click Retry in FF downloads to successfully finish it). Windows Properties shows exactly the same byte size, and I have just run a powershell hash check on this file and it checks out as exactly the same as the one I'm running, so this should be the one. Others might not be; note the issue raised in the thread in which old screensavers weren't working on x64. It may be that the poster had found this version of the Scifi screensaver tweaked elsewhere and reposted here, i.e. it may not be the original. Anyhow, if this download doesn't work for you, I'll give my file to you via google drive or something if the forum attachment limit is too low (the file is 945kb).

Quirks of the screensaver: Its name in the Screen Saver Settings dialog "Screen saver" dropdown list isn't "Science Fiction" or some such helpful moniker; instead, it's "Organic Art" and it displays no preview on the little fake monitor. If you press the "Preview" button you'll get an error in which your real monitor will go black for a few moments, so don't do that.

TIA for your efforts.

P.S. my new job requires me to work very long hours, thus the delay between your original suggestions and my response today. Further responses may be subject to the same issue, so please don't think I've vanished if I'm not immediately posting back. I'll still be here.

So if you limit the screensaver resolution to the primary monitor resolution doesn't work? I am not sure if I have this screensaver, I will try it.

I got it working. The problem seems to be just related to the installer. Here is what I did:

I installed the screensaver. I searched for the .SCR file, on my system in was in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\SciFi.scr

Right click on that file and choose "install". That should be it. After doing that, it worked fine for me.

spapakons , that's correct; in its preferences I set it at the highest resolution of the primary monitor and it doesn't make any difference.

hsehestedt , I do have the scifi.scr file in SysWOW64, but right-click > Install doesn't change anything for me. Behavior continues exactly as before: if monitors are set to "Duplicate", it will work, but stops working if set to "Extend". I've done a system reboot twice just to make sure.

Apart from finding a similar modern screensaver, you could also use OBS Studio or similar application to record a video of the old screensaver on the primary monitor. Then you can find a video screensaver to play the video. As you may suspect a video screensaver can be configured to play a video file in a loop, so you could play a video of the original screensaver. However I am not sure about the quality but it's a good workaround.