My problem is that the screensaver will come on and then within minutes go off leaving the desktop and any apps showing in all their glory. The screen still goes black as normal but the screensaver just won't stay active.
no issues here. actually the iTunes artwork is now clickable, so if I see an album I'd like to hear I just scroll and click play. I'm sure I'll get annoyed when I just want to go to the desktop because I have to now hit the space bar to wake it up.
I tried cleaning the system cache and let it rest for a day. Now, the Screen Saver is working.
I also partitioned my HD with SL to try Mavericks. Afterwards I unmounted the partition, fixed the disk errors and permissions, and loaded mavericks directly over my "old" Snow Leopard system (partition). Everything is good. The Mavericks startup identified all the incompatible software which I deleted with an app cleaner.