Problem with flickering background icons

[fsidib]

Since it is practically impossible to find the exact answer to this exact bug from the immense ocean of Oblivion bugs, I feel forced to make a new forum topic out of it. I apologize if this is somewhat of a known issue with a huge "How to solve" stamp on it, but I haven't found it yet.

 

So, hi all. The problem I'm addressing is that after starting Oblivion, all background windows' start flickering their scrollbars and whatnot on top of Oblivion, which is gruesomely irritating. In addition the system tray icons that blink or change (such as the LAN icon and Sygate symbol; I bet other firewall softwares have blinking systray icons as well) get on top of Oblivion as well. Of course I can just minimize all the windows' on the background, but it doesn't solve the issue. The ridiculous part is that I *did* have Oblivion as an illegal copy, but felt like buying it since I had been using over 130 hours on it. A fair deal, maybe, but I just can't understand why suddenly the retail Oblivion doesn't work. I fiddled around a little, installing new Directx 9 drivers and the newest Catalyst drivers for my ATi X800 XT. So, incidentally I have the exact system which the box itself recommends; an equivalent processor to 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 (AMD 3000+), 1GB of RAM and a ATi X800 series graphics card.

 

I have a strong feeling this is some sort of a bogus drivers issue, since not long ago, maybe a week or so, I ran the illegal Oblivion and it worked perfectly fine. Then BANG the retail version screws up pretty much everything. Anyone else had an experience similar to this? I'd like to know which Catalyst drivers, and exactly which Directx 9 drivers I should get. I know the procedure of cleaning up old drivers from my system32 folder, but I'm not in the mood of going on and try out those numerous drivers companies have to offer.

 

Alternatively you might want to offer me a small software that'd somehow tell Windows to crank up its superiority back to its buttocks and let Oblivion be the very-most-top program while in full screen.

 

There is only one difference I can think of between the illegal copy and the retail; the retail is "GotY". But this wouldn't explain why the illegal copy won't work properly anymore either.

 

I've already tried running Oblivion without patching, with 1.1 BETA patch, 1.2.0416 patch, with the unofficial patch, with Shivering Isles installed, with three different Directx 9 drivers and two different Catalyst drivers. I _must_ be missing something in here. It worked miraculously well by the time it was released, why wouldn't it work now?

 

Sorry if you fell asleep while reading all this.

[Abramul]

I've seen the flickering tray icons in both Morrowind and Red Faction, however since I normally minimize everything to use the desktop icon, I can't say if scrollbars would do the same.

 

I'd try minimizing everything as well as pulling the taskbar all the way down. What you can't see...can't be seen by you?

[TheTerminator2004]

This is yet another problem inherent in Windows, some programs (usually mad by Microsoft) insist on being on top, no matter what you want- msn messenger is a good example of this.

 

I've never seen the sys tray icons do that though, which is odd... do they only do it when they change, or are they always there?

[fsidib]

Ah, I managed to solve the issue already. The cause was this rather useless desktop candy WindowBlinds. I've now learned not to use it.

 

I bumped into a new problem, however, which has been acknowledged to be existant. I try to solve that now, but seems like no site likes to give the fix even if there is one. (candlesticks represented as yellow triangles)