Create Shortcut Icon to Disable / Enable the Screensaver
How many times have you been watching a long video on your computer and had the screensaver come on? Then you play the game of trying to jiggle the mouse every certain number of minutes to make sure it doesn't happen again… seems like it would be easier to have a really quick way to disable the screensaver.
Our solution comes in the form of a little utility named flipss.exe which can be used to easily enable or disable the screensaver via a command line argument… we'll just have to manually create shortcuts for each task.
Create Disable/Enable Shortcut
Right-click on the desktop and choose New \ Shortcut from the menu.
You will need to enter in the full path to where you saved the flipss.exe file, followed by either "/off" or "/on". For instance, if you saved the utility in C:\MyFiles you would use this path to create the disable icon:
C:\MyFiles\flipss.exe /off
On the next screen you'll need to give it a useful name, and then create a second shortcut with "/on" which you can use to turn the screensaver back on.
You can give them different icons by going into the properties for the shortcut and choosing the "Change Icon" option. Personally I moved the icons into the quick launch bar for easier access and indexing in Launchy.
This is neat.
Could/would you build a little utility that switches the default audio device from headphones
to speakers? I find that drilling down thru C.P is a real pain.
Thanks for listening.
mc
You can also use Caffeine.
http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/index.html
Interesting, when i type in
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\FlipSS.exe /on" with the "" that are required to make a new shortcut it says
'The name 'c:\this\folder\FlipSS.exe /on' specified in the Target box is not valid. Make sure the path and file name are correct.
however
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\FlipSS.exe" /on
does not exicute the said program.
If you have placed FlipSS.exe under a folder on Program Files, the following shortcuts should theoretically work:
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\FlipSS.exe" /on
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\FlipSS.exe" /off
However, I am getting a dialog box that says "Failed SPI!" when I run it. It does this when I run this from the command line too.
It is possible that your system does not allow you to enable/disable your screensaver (even if you are an admin user) . If you can' change the scrrensaver through normal means, then this won't work either.
Having the same problem as Hmm.
when you set up your shortcut under "Target:" in the properties of the shortcut use flipss.exe /on without quotes and make sure that your "Start In:" folder is the folder where the program is…
Windows will then change to "c:\My Files\flipss flipss.exe" /on which works….
Weird and quirky but thats how I got mine to work…
I had the same problem. You have to put a space between ".exe" and /on or /off to get it to work. so it would be: xxxxxxx\flipSS.exe[space]/on (or /off). It works for me now.
I followed the instructions and … nothing works? I double-clicked the icon, my cursor "moved", and my screen saver was /not/ disabled.
I think I know what the problem is :
I also put flipss.exe in the *Program Files* folder, and I had the same error : "invalid path".
So I put flipss.exe in the C:/ root and the shortcut works well !
The problem comes from the double quotes in the path, added by Windows because of the space between *Program* and *Files* words.
If you install flipss.exe in a directory without a space in the name, I think it's ok.
@jimbo
on windows XP Pro SP2, it does not work
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\flipss.exe" /on
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\flipss.exe" /off
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\flipss.exe /on"
"C:\Program Files\FlipSS\flipss.exe /off "
i tried all four variants, either did not work or gave me an invalid path error
@Alecska
I will try and verify that
Cannot stop screensaver from kicking in.Tried doing it through properties, it lasts a while but when i restart the settings go back to on. I am running Windows XP pro sp2. How can i disable the screensaver ?
Didn't work for me… any ideas?
I have the same problem as james… Failed SPI !
I cannot set any parameters for any screensaver, even as admin… I have upgraded my HPnx9420 from XP towards Vista-Ultimate…
Does Anyone have any suggestions?? Please…
For everyone who is having problems:
there must be a space between .exe and /on (/off)
It MUST be saved outside of program files. example:
C:\FlipSSFiles\flipss.exe /on
Yeah I did that… the application does work, however it does NOT have the required result. In that i will be able to change my screen saver settings….