PC screen blanking at random

[Rowan McSheen]

Using RowPro v4 on a Lenovo laptop i3 processor 4gb ram, Win 8.1.

On occasion the screen goes blank when I'm part-way through a workout. Not often, maybe once a month or two, but it's annoying when it happens. As it did on my last session about 15 minutes in.

The laptop is plugged into the mains and the battery is removed. There's no screensaver and no power saving plan: automatic sleep and other shutdowns are off. Windows update and all other updates I can think of are off. The laptop is only used for the C2 and a bit of browsing once in a while and RowPro is the only user-installed software other than Firefox.

When the screen blanks RowPro continues to record the workout and saves as normal when I touch something to bring the screen back.

Has anyone had something similar, or any ideas on what this is?

[Carl Watts]

Yep my big old 42" plasma does it but a whack on the lower right corner fixes it for a while !

I would move to Windows 10 using the download while its free for the time being. No problems with Window 10 here, although once you have the digitally signed download and written down your product code in case you need it, I did find a format and a clean install to be the way to go on laptops however.

If you have pretty much nothing on it other than RowPro its not a big job to format the drive and reload the OS. If you want it to really boot fast then get a SSD for a replacement harddrive. These halve the time for your machine to boot.

I find it quite handy to have a second hardrive ready to go.

RowPro V5 must be very close by now so I'm really looking forward to the release and hopefully some of my ideas will turn up in it.

[Rowan McSheen]

Bloody thing did it again. Only today when I flicked the touchpad to bring back the screen it told me RowPro had encountered a "critical error", something to do with the graphics and interference in a serial cable (I think, but the laptop doesn't have one), and the workout wasn't saved. Pah.

It happened after about the same duration last time so the laptop is apparently doing something about 15 minutes in that upsets RowPro.

I'm going to install a little prog that simulates a keypress once in a while and keeps the screen active, even though the screensaver is already off. A shot in the dark but worth trying I suppose: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/index.html