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!

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