Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

Does your Windows 7 computer display turn off every 15 minutes?

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 03:27 AM PST

A recent issue I've seen on a few Windows 7 machines has been the display turning off after only 15 minutes, even though I set the Turn off the Display option to Never. Weird!

This usually occurs with a new install of Windows 7 and will result in your computer screen turning off after 15 minutes of idle time. This can occur for one of two reasons: either it's the first time you started Windows 7 or because the WinSAT score has not been calculated yet.

WinSAT stands for Windows System Assessment Tool is used to calculate the Windows Experience Index (WEI). For some reason Windows continues to count the idle time even if you change the active power plan.

You can fix this problem by resetting the Turn off the display option. Here's how you do it.

Click on Start, then Control Panel and then Hardware and Sound, and then click on Power Options.