Screen Saver Installation

[Kurando]

For the life of my, I can't get my Twingly Screensaver to work on my computer (Vista 64x), it doesn't appear in the screensaver list. Also, when it installs, even when I select Windows/System32 it doesn't install there and goes to the 64 folder.

Here's a link to the screensaver Twingly Screensaver - visualizing the global blogosphere

It doesn't have a .scr which I think is the problem, is there anyway I can bypass this?

 

[archie123]

its still beta are you sure its 64 bit compatible?

 

[Kurando]

Honestly, I think it's always been in beta, but every website like Cnet say it's compatible, is there a way to make it work in 32 bit on 64 bit?

 

[nbdeveloper]

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and had trouble installing the Twingly screensaver. I had to run the install by running “setup.exe” as administrator and also choose Vista SP2 as the compatibility OS. The installation completed successfully. Running it from the MSI and without administrative privileges resulted in the “FinishInstall.exe” crashing and a failed installation of the product.

After having run through the installation the screen saver was still missing from the screen saver list and I couldn’t find any “.scr” file in the program directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Primelabs\Twingly Screensaver).

To fix this I made a copy of “Twingly Screensaver.exe” then renamed it “Twingly.scr” and pasted it into “C:\Windows\System32”. Once I did that I could select it in my screen saver list and it ran just fine.

I’ve also emailed Twingly about the issue and the fix.

--NBDeveloper

 

[blue75]

That sounds fishy to me I'd scan the file at :

VirusTotal - Free Online Virus and Malware Scan

 

[nbdeveloper]

Uh, fishy? An ".scr" file is actualy an ".exe" with a changed extension which Windows recognizes as a "screen saver" file and deals with it appropriately. I was suggesting to modify a copy of the application's exe so that the OS will pick it up as a screen saver.

Unfortunatley my "workaround" didn't work. When I followed those steps I saw Twingly in the list of screensavers and ran it using the Preview button. It works fine in that scenario. But, when I let the default screensaver time lapse it was unable to run Twingly.

Once I saw the crash I recalled something about a screensaver running in different user contexts. I'll have to go look that one up. If I find an answer to it I'll post back here.