Vista - Vista or 7 ScreenSaver/Sleep woes with Games...

Vista or Windows 7 don't know that a game/software or application is running and it goes into screensaving mode or sleep... why is that? I don't recall having that issue with XP.

It is not a big deal but Far Cry 2 sucks as well since at anytime windows goes into a screen saver and you bring it back, the game goes into windowed mode and you can't put it back to full screen unless you get out of the game and start it again... very annoying indeed.

Others game do that but, for the most part, hitting Alt + Tab gets it back into full screen. Leave to Ubisoft to code it wrong but again, this did not happened in XP so there's something wrong with Vista or 7 as well.

Any tips?

I can only tell you that this doesn't happen to me (tested with FarCry2 and a couple of other games such as X3:TC, C&C3, Crysis, GTAIV). I didn't made any special settings when selecting my screensaver. Indeed I have set a very short time (3minutes) without ever being interupted in a fullscreen-application (be it game or not). So this leads me to the conclusion (or more a guess) that you made a setting somewhere that affects the threatment of fullscreen-applications and the windows screensaver. I recall that with using the Nvidia wizard you could set up some options regarding fullscreen 3d applications. Maybe you did something there (if using Nvidia) ?

Sorry that I can't be more of a help.

Best regards,
Noël

On the contrary, you have shed a very good light on the subject because now, I can start by checking somewhere else, even though, I know for a fact that I have not touched anything in the Nvida Control Panel in Windows 7.

I know that I have played with ScreanSaver and Sleep Modes in Windows 7 but I will be hard pressed if I can figure out what I ticked or unticked that I shouldn't have... Jeeeezzz!