After upgrade to Monterey, Screen Saver won't load photos like before in Big Sur

I have tried the solutions as presented in similar posts, but I still can't get my screen saver to load my photos. I even tried stock folders on my hard drive, but again, no load. They show up in the selector in System Preferences, but when I go to Preview the screen saver (or initiate it from the hot corner), it shows "Retrieving Photos (0 of 4)" for one of the folders (has more than 4 photos), and with others, doesn't report anything.

This all used to work just fine under Big Sur, but after Monterey, no joy. Any help appreciated!