Screen goes black when I am playing

[SsgtMatthews]

Thanks for all the help getting me back on the system. I was playing the other day and the screen went black. If I click on the screen it clears up or if I move the mouse around it cleans part of the screen it touches...kind of like paint shop eraser.

I am running windows xp, 1 gig ram, 256 mb nvidea card

Thanks

[FlashfyreSP]

Check your background processes...the game doesn't like to share resources, so if you have an email-checking app, or a messenger program running, it could cause it. Basically, anything that causes your display to be 'repainted' seems to make the game screen go black, until you 'refresh' it by moving the mouse (which only fixes the area under the cursor) or by switching screens (which repaints the entire thing).

[Alby]

this happened to me when I updates some video drivers
I rolled back to previous drivers and it stopped.

[SsgtMatthews]

I have turned off msn messenger and Dell updates. Still got problems. could it be my antivirus?spam detector?

Heck, so much of the computer is now linked to the net.

Thanks

[stevemk1a]

For me the problem was my webshots screensaver.

[azraelck]

Trillian does it for me. I keep my McAffey suite running full time, and it doesn't cause any problems. Trillian causes issues with blackouts, task bar appearing over the game screen, and other oddities. That indicates that there is a conflict with web-based programs for some reason.

[FlashfyreSP]

Like I said, anything that refreshes your display or causes pop-ups to appear will make you screen go black. Even an email notification program (like Google's) that gives a preview of the message just received...

[SsgtMatthews]

Ok, what is this screen saver you all are talking about. I have turned off my microsoft screen saver and the dern screen is still going black.. a real PITA.

I don't know of anything that would still cause my screen to be refreshed?