I have a Saitek P2500 and when I play trackmania the screen saver comes on (and the monitor turns off too) after the normal time because there's no mouse and keyboard usage. How do I configure the gamepad so that windows knows there's activity? I went to the device manager but didn't find anything.

You can create a different Power profile. The use POWERCFG to change your Profile before and after playing your game. That's my idea at least. Or you could change it manually.

what's POWERCFG?

Its a CLI tool in Windows that allows you to script Power Schemes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748940.aspx

that's still alot of things to do -- window key+r then cmd then powercfg then etc. etc.

i think it has something to do with allowing the gamepad waking the computer up or something? i googled a bit and it's supposed to be in the device manager then properties but i didn't find anything in my gamepad.

right now i just have the screen saver and monitor auto off turned off.

You wouldn't need to open the command prompt and type all that in. Just make a batch file and stick it on your desktop or something.

It doesn't sound like your gamepad supports power management features.

If you are gaming, then you should have Screensaver disabled.