When you open the Windows Live Photo Gallery Screensaver settings dialog, theme controls may be missing and the message "This computer’s video card can’t play themes" is displayed. You might be knowing that the themes in Windows Photo Gallery slideshow as well as in Windows Live Photo Gallery screensaver won’t be enabled if the Graphics card score (Windows Experience Index) is less than 3.0.
Interestingly some users reported that this message was displayed in their systems although the Graphics card score was above 5.0. I worked on this issue for an hour or so, and thought I’d write my observations, solution & a workaround here. The problem seems to occur if Windows Live Photo Gallery is unable to query the Graphics card score for some reason.
First step is to update your Windows Experience Index rating.
Update your Windows Experience Index Score
Login as Administrator (or equivalent.)
Open Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, and then click Performance Information and Tools.
Click Update my score. The assessment will run for few minutes.
After assessment is complete, open Windows Live Photo Gallery Screensaver settings page to see if themes are enabled. If not, try the following step:
Registering the WinSATAPI.dll file
Open an elevated Command Prompt. To open an elevated Command Prompt, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
Register the WinSATAPI.dll file by typing the following command and pressing {ENTER}:
You should see the following message:
Never mind about the error code 0×80070716. Restart Windows, and then open Windows Live Photo Gallery Screensaver settings page to see if themes are enabled.
Workaround
If none of the above steps work, you may use the following workaround. Setting the Windows Experience Index manually fixes the problem in most cases. It’s the same old WinSATScore registry value which comes to the rescue. But wait! You’ll have to implement the registry value in a different registry branch.
Creating the "WinSATScore" Registry Value
Click Start, type Regedit.exe and press {ENTER}
Navigate to the following location:
Right-click on the key, and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value, and name it as WinSATScore
Double-click WinSATScore, select Decimal, and set the value data to 300 (or higher.)
Exit the Registry Editor.
The Windows Live Photo Gallery Screensaver settings page should now show the theme controls.
Here you see all the themes in the dropdown.
If the WinSATScore registry value exists, the Windows Live Photo Gallery screensaver won’t take the strain to query the Graphics card score using Windows Experience Index API.
Good luck, and enjoy the Screensaver themes!
Related Posts
- Vista Slideshow Themes and WinSAT Score
- Determine Which Codecs You Need to Play a Multimedia (Audio/Video) File
- Windows Live Photo Gallery Error 0×80010108 Preventing Photo From Being Displayed
- Free Windows 7 Desktop Themes and Backgrounds From Microsoft
- How to Access the Hidden Themes in Windows 7
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed! We feature Tips, Troubleshooting information, Scripts and Utilities for Microsoft Windows Operating Systems!
Prefer an E-mail subscription?
Nice, simply, wonderful registry hack that works.
The registry edit worked for me too… except that I only get the following themes
Classic
Fade
Pan and zoom
black and white
sepia
Random
I’m missing the following themes
Album
Collage (my favorite)
Frame
Glass
Spin
Stack
Travel
…. does anyone know how to add music to this screen saver… as is done in Windows Media Screen saver?
The change needs to be in the SLIDESHOW folder…NOT screensaver. I had a screen size issue when setting the value to 300. The “collage” theme didn’t fill the screen. So I changed the value to 400 and it’s working perfectly. NO change whatsoever when adding the line to the screensaver folder though.
Sapphire ATI Radeon 5570 – Win7 64bit.
Fixing the registry fixed the problem!!!!
Thank you so much!!!!
The last step was the trick, thank you!!!!
Thanks Last method worked!
Thanks much. Updating my score fixed the problem
Yep, the screensaver is definetely buggy. I agree with Gareth. The workaround is a partial solution. My laptop exhibits exact same issues. I was unsure when my screensaver went belly up and stated my video card (a Radeon HD 6970 with WEI 7.6!!!) not being able to support themes. I thought windows updates was to blame but I do recall doing a WEI refresh. I guess this caused the problem. The WinSATscore registry edit gets the pictures and themes working but no videos work anymore. If a video sits in the target folder then I get an appcrash now if it shuffles to that point. They used to work fine. Plus the screensaver despite being on shuffle always starts with the same photo.
MS need to sort this out! It’s pretty poor. The workaround is helpful -ish but it’s still a half assed workaround.
In meantime I use Ultra Screen Saver to make my own and this plays pics and videos just dandy but it’s not quite as nice looking as the Windows one. I would use Googles Picasa screensaver, but whilst the photo transitions are good it doesn’t play videos.
Anyone know of other good photo & video screensavers. Trouble with Ultra Screen Saver is you have to make your own (so if you want to add a few new pics you have to make a new one). I would rather one where you just point at a folder or collection of sub folders containing pics and vids and it then displays in shuffle mode with nice transition effects.