Q: I have a problem with my keyboard on an HP Pavilion system running Windows XP when the computer goes to sleep (standby mode). It does not recognize the keyboard during the next session. This requires that I reboot. I’m not running a screen saver, and I’ve tried uninstalling the keyboard through Device Manager and forcing XP to go out and reinstall the drivers – still no resolution. Hope you can help. Even though I’m a retired Microsoftie, I still think you’re right on 99 percent of the time.
– Jim Sturm, Chicago
A: Thank you. I wonder, though, what you will think of the answer I have to give on this far-from-unknown glitch.
The problem is that the Energy Department persuaded computer makers to build in screen savers, blank ones included, as a conservation matter.
Your computer knows it is time to blank the screen because at each split-second cycle of the main chip, it requests time information. Ordinarily, each of those cycles runs far faster than you can press a key. The keyboard is said to poll the central processor at each cycle to either report a key was pressed or, in the case of screen savers, blank or otherwise, it is supposed to announce its presence and trigger the revival of the screen. Likewise, the screen saver polls the central processor so it knows when to kick in or when to restart.
In far too many cases, these two poll requests simultaneously hit the same spot on the central processor and create hopeless confusion.
This interrupt conflict can sometimes be changed by getting a new keyboard, but that helps only sometimes. It is said to be possible to fix the thing by changing the order in which steps are taken in the computer’s BIOS settings, which come up at boot-up to configure the Basic Input Output System.
With most computers, you are told how to open the BIOS settings during boot-up. But this is dangerous and complicated, so I reluctantly have told readers over the years if their system suffers from this glitch, the best solution is to disable the screen blanking altogether.
If you need to do this, right-click on the desktop and select Properties from the pop-up box that appears. There, open the tab for Screen Saver. Look for the federal logo with the word “Energy” in front of a star. Click on the Power icon, and you will get the command boxes that display settings for handling the mouse and the keyboard. Set them all to Never.
Contact Jim Coates at askjimcoates@gmail.com.
