I am working on a Dell Laptop that had a bad hard drive and I replaced it and freshly installed Windows XP using the Dell OEM XP disc and no matter what the screen saver will not kick in. I read a forum post about a PowerDVD service stopping this but this machine just has Windows XP and the Dell drivers on it. WHen I got to the screen saver options under display and hit the test button the screen saver kicks in for a millisecond but then cuts out. Everything I read on this problem here and by searching the net does not seem to apply. There are no external devices and no extra software on the machine other than Windows XP SP3 and the latest updates. Is there some place maybe I can look to see if I can shed some light on what might be keeping the screen saver from kicking in. I was thinking of disabling the touchpad in the BIOS as that is the last thing I can think of that could be causing this but I wanted to start a forum post to see if there was any ideas that could help me. The machine seems to run fine otherwise.

Edit: Just for fun I tried throwing Vista and Windows 7 on the same machine using Dell OEM discs knowing they would not activate but as a test and the computer exhibits the same problem. No screen saver.