Comments on: Baldur’s Gate 1 graphics glitch and disabling NVidia hardware acceleration

By: Helen

Helen — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:48:35 +0000

you fixed it! I am unspeakably happy.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:43:28 +0000

Awesome! This is going to help me relive all of those incredible moments on my new laptop!

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:20:21 +0000

Great advice. For me, the trick was using the x86 SDK DirectX control panel. Thanks everyone, now my child can enjoy this game that she’s finally old enough to play.

By: MF

MF — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:22:08 +0000

This is great! I’ve tried to find a solution for this problem for days and I can not finally play Icewind Dale 2 on my windows 7 computer!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:25:54 +0000

Ha! I’ll second that =D

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:55:12 +0000

I love you for fixing my game.

By: Standa

Standa — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:23:18 +0000

Thank you very much!

I have GeForce 7600GT and the portrait selection icons (green) were flashing, now you helped me solve it. Im grateful that I can play without that disturbing flashes.

By: Neil Treeby

Neil Treeby — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:12:56 +0000

Thanks for the advice, this all works wonderfully (with an eVGA 9400GT), no messing round with unofficial patches etc. I just need to remember to turn acceleration back on before playing Oblivion again!

By: yiming

yiming — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:48:09 +0000

Thanks for the explanation! Windows graphics is totally not my area of expertise, but that makes a lot of sense considering the other changes (and) brought by WDDM. I do hope Windows 7 would remove the need for having to use a DirectX debug tool to change acceleration settings, or better yet, fix the glitching directly.

By: Fake Al Gore

Fake Al Gore — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:34:00 +0000

When the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.0 was released with Windows Vista it did not include native GDI+ acceleration. Compatibility was obtained by directing all GDI+ calls through the Desktop Window Manager. This results in some odd artifacts in DirectDraw applications such as Baldur’s Gate and, at times, decreased 2D rendering performance. Since hardware acceleration is not implemented unless specifically done by the device driver developer at great cost and with little gain, there is no slider on the Troubleshoot tab.

Windows 7, with its included WDDM 1.1, has native GDI+ acceleration once again built-in to the operating system. AMD and NVIDIA already have fully-compliant WDDM 1.1 drivers ready for their more recent products.

By: yiming

yiming — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:27:38 +0000

So far I only know of two ways to fix this thing. If performance is terrible after switching off DirectDraw, then you’re going to have to try the second option: Software Transparent BLT and 16-bit color. You lose a little bit of resolution, but you’ll get the rest of the benefit of graphics card acceleration.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:41:25 +0000

Hey, thanks for the tip. Works on XP, too.

However, you were right about it slowing down a lot. Hmm…
Any other way I can bypass that? Other than a new processor?:D

By: Zach

Zach — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:28:47 +0000

Yes this is awesome.

By: DecimisRex

DecimisRex — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:04:57 +0000

Thank you so much, this is just what I needed

By: Citizen7

Citizen7 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:45:38 +0000

Thanks a lot. This worked perfectly for me. I didn’t bother to change the x64 architecture, just the x86. That worked fine. No mouse trails either. I’m glad to get this going. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this classic.

By: yiming

yiming — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:12:20 +0000

Happy to help! Yeah, you have to switch with the x86 architecture as well — maybe because the game runs in x86 mode, not sure. I actually did the exact same thing as you when I was dealing with this — maybe I should make that clear in the post.

By: LuckyJack

LuckyJack — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:27:29 +0000

Did it, the thing was not only to change the hardware accelarion in the x64 folder, but also in the x86.

Thanks alot! I have mouse trails now, but as it seems only in the menu. I think I can live with that.

By: LuckyJack

LuckyJack — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:25:38 +0000

Sadly doesnt seem to work, i swithed it off as you staded but Dxdiag still tells me the acceleration is on. Also I still get black boxes, although in the game Planescape Torment. But I think it’s exactly the same error.

By: yiming

yiming — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:08:00 +0000

Ah yes, I got into Baldur’s Gate rather late, and it took me years to complete my first BG1 game because of college. Don’t repeat my mistake

In any case, I’m happy this post helped. Enjoy the game.

By: Gregers

Gregers — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:33:37 +0000

Thanks a lot for this!
Man, finals can wait, Baldur’s Gate, here I come!