99% of the time this problem is a result of out-of-date driver software for your video card. The best thing to do is to update the drivers for your video card. (Check the "How do I update the driver software for my video card?" help topic for detailed help on drivers)

If you've already got the latest version of your video card drivers or you are unable to locate them, many players have been able to get the games to run by turning down the video hardware acceleration setting in windows. Here's how you do that:
You may need to re-boot your machine to get the changes to take affect. Also we should point out that this is only a temporary solution and may adversely affect other applications and the general performance of windows itself.

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