What's different about Screensaver preview in Windows 8?

28
votes

I'm working on a simple WPF based screensaver and can't get the thumbnail preview to work.

When you open the display control panel and go to configure the screensaver, the selected screensaver is supposed to display a thumbnail preview within the dialog:

Display Properties - Screensaver

I've found a number of good examples online of how to do this, including:

Following these examples, I couldn't get anything to work - the preview thumbnail turns black, but nothing else appears. Downloading each of these (and a few others) and running them had the same result - a blank preview thumbnail. I've done this before on Windows 7 and it wasn't hard, so I was a bit frustrated.

Copying the binaries across to a Windows XP machine, I found that each of them showed a preview thumbnail successfully.

So, there's clearly something that's changed between Windows 7 and Windows 8.

What do I need to do differently to enable my WPF screensaver to properly display a thumbnail preview on Windows 8?

3
wpfwindows-8screensaver
answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-desktop/… – Vladimir
Thanks @VladimirFrolov, but that doesn't answer my question - in that thread the preview works fine, but behaviour of the actual saver is impaired. – Bevan
Hmm.. the screen saver previews work for me under Windows 8. I tried both the Raindrops one (from Writing a Screen saver in WPF), as well as the CC Hearts Screen Saver. Both showed the preview under Windows 8 RTM (32 and 64 bit versions); in both cases, the screen goes black for about 10 - 15 seconds, and then the preview gets displayed. The only thing that I had to do was install .Net 3.5 for the Raindrops screen saver. Perhaps it is a graphics driver issue? – chue x
It may be an issue with WPF's Direct3D acceleration (perhaps related to drivers as mentioned by @chuex) - have you tried forcing software rendering as per msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… ? – NextInLine
Check the event log for errors. – Emond Erno

3 Answers

0
votes

I've found the most common problems with moving code from Win 8 to Xp is permission and dependencies. Check that the files are not needing some weird permissions (not sure what permission the preview runs with) and that all dependencies are honoured (also their permissions).

If I remember right, all windows screen savers are just renamed exe files with command line arguments. Maybe try rename it and run it directly?

-1
votes

Check what version of the framework you are using and try to use the client profile if possible

Also Try this small workaround if helps:

In Windows Explorer Go to > Options > Change folder and search options then click on the View tab and uncheck the box that says Always show icons, never thumbnails.

I hope it should work.

-1
votes

Screensaver is executable file but with .scr extension

When preview dialog required - OS start such file with /p key. See also https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows/win32/screen-saver-command-line