Sorry for the delayed reply. Holidays got in the way...
Hope you all had a great one!
To answer the question posed by Jim, I can't recall exactly when this problem started. I seem to think it was only with v3.2, but it may have actually started with 3.1. I'd have to see a timeline of the dates of each release to know for sure. I seem to recall it working fine on my previous laptop (also a Dell) but not working on this one at all from the moment I set it up. However, this all occurred right as I was packing up my life, selling our house, and moving across the country so I didn't have time to document it more thoroughly.
And also, no I'm not using an add-in window manager. I'm not that familiar with them however so maybe one of the other apps I run regularly might provide a similar service? Though I do recall back then starting up with nearly all my startup items disabled and still getting this behavior. I'll go ahead and confirm that again though now that it's been a few years. Safe Mode alone I know would have problems because it doesn't load the full set of video drivers, but I'll use Ace Utils Startup Manager or Windows own msconfig to configure it down to the bare bones startup again and confirm the same behavior. I'll report back after I've had a chance to do that, hopefully later tonight or tomorrow.
PS - no other screen savers have exhibited the same behavior but then again, the only other ones I have on my system are the ones built into windows.