Vista - Odd and semingly unique gaming problem

Hey, I have an odd gaming issue I just noticed the past couple days. I have my computer hooked up to a standard 22' lcd monitor, and a 37' HDTV. Often I clone my monitor to my TV and use a 360 controller to play games on it such as Assasin's creed and Bioshock through steam. I noticed that after around 20-30 minutes of play using just the controller the HDTV and Monitor will turn black, and it resolves itself when i move the mouse of the computer. Initially I thought it was the screen saver or hard disk shutting off or standby, so i disabled all those and it still occurs. It doesnt however occur when I use the mouse/keyboard to play the same games. It also occurs when i am just using the computer monitor and the 360 controller. Any ideas what could be causing this?

I don't really understand but I'll throw some ideas around nonetheless

Sometimes, I have played with my display properties and if I choose the option to have my desktop on both displays (22" LCD MOnitor + Std TV), my 22" LCD goes black and the desktop only shows on my TV.

Now, seing as to you are capable of playing for at least 20 mins, I don't think your problem is what I stated above but, worth a check anyways.

While I am at it, I would check temps, video drivers, re install video drivers even if you did it recently, they tend to get corrupted easily (at least for me) and I would also check Monitor Drivers, I have issues when my monitor doesn't have dedicated 64bit drivers and uses the Std or Generic Drivers.

Here's an update.. I noticed the monitor seems to shut off after around 20 minutes of keyboard/mouse inactivity. I also noticed that the computer takes a couple seconds to continue running smoothly after i move the mouse which leads me to believe it has nothing to do with the monitor.

It really seems like some sort of hidden standby or low power mode from either my HD/GPU or even my MOBO which has its own little power saving apps that run in the background. Although i dont remember comming across any sort of hidden setting for any of the above mentioned hardware. Speaking of which my gpu is a radeon 4850, and my mobo is an asus p5q pro turbo.

So has anyone ever experienced some sort of standby-like function with their computer even when windows standby/screen saver are all disabled?

Have you checked your POWER SCHEMES??? it sure seems like that may be your problem

yeah power plan was the first thing i thought. Turn off the display is set to never and sleep is set to never. I did however notice that every time i set "turn off hard disk after" to never whenever i come back it says 20 minutes. Would my hard disk be turing off when i am playing a game without keyboard/mouse input? i dont know the specifics of the "turn off hard disk after" function.

I remember having that issue as well but I forget how I fixed it or if by fixing something else, I was able to fix the issue... Vista was more of a headache than a fun OS to utilize for sure... I am happy with Win 7 but I still dual boot with Vista so I can throw it to the curb just yet.

I see Vista as an OS for the PC Guru and not for the mere mortal.

Vista comes with lots of problems which alot of the time are hard to solve yet if ur not having a problem (hard to get lol) its usually pretty user friendly!