shinai wrote:
1. It seems that NAV's idle activity doesn't start until after my screensaver starts. (If i set my screensaver delay time to seven or ten minutes, the NAV idle activity pop-up pops up 18 seconds later. If i set the delay time to one minute, the NAV pop-up pops up a minute or so after the screensaver comes on. If i set the delay time to four minutes, NAV still waits till after the screensaver starts before starting.)
2. When the NAV pop-up pops up, it disengages the screensaver.
3. When the screensaver disengages, it causes the pop-up to immediately go away, presumably also stopping the idle activity. (The screensaver delay time begins again, the screensaver starts after the delay time ends, and the NAV pop-up pops up again after the same amount of time that it did the previous time.)
4. It appears that neither NAV's idle activity nor the screensaver get to accomplish their tasks. This is not desired behavior. *tears hair out*
5. Is there any way to tell NAV to continue the idle activity after the screensaver turns off?
Hi, shinai. What is happening in your situation, is the idle activity NAV is performing is triggering the Video Drivers to think there is system activity going on - at a level where the screen saver should be lowered - and thus the screen reverts to visibility. The cycle repeats as you describe.
To break the cycle, what is required is for the Video drivers not to detect background activity that has no keyboard input - as activity that should bring the system out of screensaver mode. This kind of problem is usually fixed by Video Driver updates. Check to see if there are Video Driver updates available for your particular Video Card make and model.
Caveats, wrinkles and "gotchas":
Intel has just released new Video Drivers for the IGP onboard video on Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs. If your system runs in Hybrid mode (you run the Intel drivers when the system is idle and only switch to dedicated Video Card drivers when the system demands high-performance video), then you have two Video Driver sets to update, not just one.
Also, there is a piece of software called Optimus (for Nvidia) or Enduro (for ATI) that controls the automatic switching between the IGP and the high-performance Video Card modes. Bugs in this "interface layer" could cause problems where the system "pops" out of IGP mode (which is where it should be during idle) because the interface-layer "sees" the idle-mode-activity from NIS/NAV as something which demands the high-performance video drivers become active. Again, a cycle starts and repeats in error from this false-trigger.
As far as I am aware, the only solution for the above problem is to keep all the Video Drivers on your system up-to-date - or to revert to earlier Video Driver versions that do not false-trigger on idle activities that should properly be ignored. However, using older Video Driver versions means you have to deal with other bugs in those older video drivers that are not being addressed - other than by updating - and thereby using solutions that incur the potential stability and interoperability/incompatibility problems that come with the latest video drivers that incorporate Optimus/Enduro.
Furthermore, since this whole Optimus/Enduro thing - along with the interaction with the Intel IGP drivers - is all bleeding-edge technology right now - I somehow suspect that having glitches that the Video Driver companies haven't got properly sorted out is going to be common - until ATI/Nvidia/Intel work out some sort of "we need to cross-cooperate on this stuff" procedure - so the three players are not working to cross purposes and/or stomping on each other's toes.
Other things to be aware of:
Until the above situation settles down, NIS/NAV gets to be a victim of political machinations between the three abovementioned players - as each try to screw up the others' lives to "gain competitive advantage" - which is marketspeak drivel for "we will throw monkeywrenches into each others' product, and we don't care how much it screws up users' lives".
Welcome to computers in 2013. Furthermore, I suspect Symantec (and all the rest of the anti-malware developers) are tearing their hair out behind-the-scenes as they try and cope with the consequences of working with "beta" software that ATI/Nvidia/Intel are foisting on the marketplace as "release quality". Symantec (and everybody else) is frantically trying to keep their products working properly as the marketplace thrashes through instability after instability around them - and nobody is calling the release of half-baked Video Driver software the nonsense that it is.
No, it ain't pretty. 