Intermittently, my screen saver stops functioning and the desktop appears for 2 - 5 seconds. Then the screen saver comes back on again. Restarting the computer fixes the problem for a few hours but then it resurfaces. Also, occasionally when typing in Word, the mouse pointer disappears. To make the pointer reappear I must right-click the mouse. Can you help? The computer is a Compaq Presario running Windows Me.

Your screen saver problem could be related either to the screen saver itself or might not be screen saver specific at all. If you are using a custom screen saver (i.e., not a standard screen saver as included with Windows Me) then the screen saver could be faulty. Change the screen saver to a standard Windows Me screen saver and see if the problem persists. If not, try redownloading or reinstalling the screen saver. If the problem does persist, or you are using a standard screen saver, then we need to look elsewhere for a solution to the problem. Possibly, there is a process or application running in the background which is causing an interruption in the screen saver, or causing the screen saver to lose its focus to another running application (similar to pressing ALT-TAB to toggle between active programs). The problem is unlikely to be a case of the computer mistakenly believing that the mouse was moved or that a key has been pressed as, once the screen saver has disappeared, it reappears after a few seconds. You could try closing some background applications to see if the problem ceases. Of course, you could also attempt to reinstall Windows. In any event, if the problem is not occurring in extremely short time frames, you would probably be better of leaving it be and use the Advanced Power Management feature of Windows to put your monitor into standby mode after, say, 30 minutes of inactivity. I wouldn’t set standby mode to anything less than this as it can’t do your monitor any good being (in effect) switched on and off all the time. This work around would reduce the ‘nuisance’ value of the problem. Regarding your second problem of the mouse pointer disappearing when typing in Word, this is a really interesting question to answer! When fixing computers I have seen problems occur if one is using a ’special’ type of mouse (in particular, a Microsoft USB mouse) without installing the drivers. Just plugging in the mouse will work, but it can have some unintended side-effects. So, if you do have a Microsoft brand mouse, the drivers can be found on the CD that came with the mouse, or can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com.au. Alternatively, this could be one of those weird problems which appear without warning and seem to defy any logic or way of being fixed. As a last resort you can try reinstalling Word. However, if you would like some more guidance on fixing this problem, please contact me again with the following information on the mouse: brand, model, and connection type (e.g., USB, PS/2, serial).