> The power setting is power-off after 20 minutes

You will have to clarify; you have "Turn Off Monitor" set to "After 20 mins"?

Yes, as you said

Is the screensave "running" and preventing the other options from kicking in?  What if you make the "None" setting a minute longer than any Monitor power off setting, or remove the time for the None setting?

Try this (based on experience on my system):

change screensaver from NONE to any one of them, change the time setting to 10 min. and then Click OK.
go back into the Display properties, and change the time-out back to 15 min. (though this should not matter) and reset the screensaver to NONE, then Click OK.

now go to your Power Settings, there basically do the same thing, change the time out to 15 min. then Click OK... rinse and repeat with 20 min setting...

it seems that sometimes the settings have to be refreshed, and it will only write the config file new, when changes have been made...
 

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

First of all, I misstated one item:  The screen saver was "blank", not "none".

I tried the following:  Changed the screen saver, changed the screen saver "after" setting, changed the "turn off monitor" "after" setting, clicked on "apply" in both cases.

I tried all of these in various combinations.  Nothing makes a difference.  The screen saver comes on at the specified time, the monitor never turns off

There is one thing that may have some significance:  MagicJack was recently updated.  One of the changes I noticed is that the screen saver now goes away when I get a phone call.

Are you sure a 3rd party program isn't involved?  If you have some other installed screensaver, and it's going quirky, perhaps it could mess up the way the whole Windows screensaver system works.  If you have any screen-saver type programs installed, perhaps you could try uninstalling them, restart, and see if it works correctly.

Well, it's fixed.

This is what I did.
    Changed the monitor off to "never"
    Clicked "apply" and "Ok" then "Ok' on the properties.
    Changed the monitor off to 1 minute
    Clicked "apply" and "ok" then "ok" on the properties.

BTW, I've done this on other Microsoft products too.  A feature gets out of whack; the only way to fix it is to turn the feature off alltogether, then turn it back on.
    

I've got the same thing happening and my mj also got updated recently ...
I'll try your fix webrabbit

Let us know whether it worked, senk1s.  If it does, perpaps we can post in in a more general forum.

senk1s,
Do you have a "Power Schemes" selection? I found that it made a difference on my machine.  I have mine set on "Presentation" and it works perfect.
The screen saver is "None" and Power Saver is on 5 Minutes.
the Screen turns completely off, as I wanted.

A Power Scheme is just a pre-set combination of options.  You can design your own.  I prefer to just set the individual options.

Mine works too with webrabbits trick ...but it 'loses' the setting once i reboot the PC

I get a black debug file on the desktop once i reboot
xp pro sp3

my power scheme is home/office

i meant blank instead of black

A program like this might tell you (if you don't know) which process is creating your blank file.

Process Monitor v2.8
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

You could then see if that program or another is behind your settings not being saved.

310353 - How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

316434 - HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

310560 - How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560

Do you get the same problem if you create another user and test with that?

thanks linney - i will try the process monitor and also logging in as a different user