JJ wrote:

Ron Hardin wrote:
There's no antivirus on the machine - just zonealarm (machine is used
as a cpu server, not a browser)

Try disabling all third party programs including your background jobs then
check it again. Don't forget to disable all third-party device driver tools
such as NVIDIA video, ATI/AMD video, and Realtek audio. As well as third
party services. Use Process Explorer and AutoRuns from Microsoft's website
to find any third party programs.

It stays dark if I stop the background job (even just by kill -STOP, so it's still
taking memory but just suspended)

But that's not the common treatment by XP, which seems (when working) to check
keyboard and mouse activity rather than processor load.

I suspect some software is substituting processor load for human activity, or
some software mimics human activity and XP takes it as a cue to turn on the
monitor.

I understand flash has some such thing to keep the screen on watching a video,
but there's no flash on this machine.

One clue is that what turns on is the screen saver screen, so some part of XP
at least thinks it's idle still.
--


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.