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I have been having problems with my Screen saver and Alt-Tab for a few days now.

I am not using wireless mouse or keyboard, and have been mainly using my touchpad on my laptop rather than hooking up my USB mouse.

The problem that I am having is that my screen saver will not turn on, and alt-tab only stays on screen for about a second and a half before vanishing, leaving me no real time to switch between tasks if I have more than two tasks running at once.

I am pretty sure that this is somehow tied to a problem with my touchpad, though I am not positive. My conclusion that it is tied to my touchpad stems from the fact that when I open Windows Live Messenger, the "Find a Contact of Phone Number" text box automatically gets a blinking cursor.

Has anybody else had this problem and fixed it successfully? I was told that it would require a complete fresh install of Windows, however I do not want to go through the trouble of backing up the 70GB of information that is stored on my computer if I don't have to.

The Screen Saver is controlled through Display in the Control Panel. This allows you to set the time of no activity before the Screen Saver goes on. Other settings are completed through Power Options in the Control Panel. One thing that is frequently overlooked is that the monitor must remain on in order for the Screen Saver to display- check this setting time in Power Options.

As for the Alt Tab key combination, I find it works best by pressing Alt first, then Tab. I also have found on the laptop that the critical timing for this option occasionally doesn't get met.

The touch-pad settings are in the Control Panel> Mouse> Touchpad tab. Some computers-Dell & Acer to name 2, have the function called Easy Launcher. However, I haven't been able to find anything on the setting for this. Looking at the screen for it seems to indicate the keyboard shortcut would be entered there and then assigned to a section of the keypad.