Playing cards flashing in Microsoft games

[SC Tom]

Win7 HP SP1 32-bit, Asus M4N68T-M V2 MB, 4GB RAM, 465GB SATA-II HDD (415GB
free), Nvidia GT 240 video card w/ latest driver.

Recently (within the last 2 or 3 days; I'm not exactly sure), my cards in
Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, and the tiles in Mahjong Titans have
been flashing, like the cursor is rapidly passing over each card. The only
way to start a new game is to press F2 and then Enter; the mouse won't allow
me to pick anything from the menus since they just flash like the cards do.

Some of the things I've tried in order to resolve this issue are:
Scanned for malware (MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and MSE) - each came
back clean
Ran SFC /SCANNOW - no problems found
Restored back to July 5th - no joy there either
Clean boot - no joy
Safe Mode (with and without Networking) - no joy
Uninstalled my video driver and tried the standard Microsoft VGA driver -
made no difference
Replaced my wireless mouse with a PS/2 one - no change
Rebooted without my Microsoft KB - no change
Turned off Windows Aero - no change
Removing and reinstalling the games through Windows Features - made no
difference I realize that doesn't truly uninstall it)
I even tried copying the folders from my other Win7 machine, and that didn't
work either.

I have other non-Microsoft card games that work just fine, and no other
non-Microsoft game is affected at all. I just tested Chess Titans to what it
does, and it's screwed up, too. I can't select any piece other than the
left-most pawn.

I have a system image from July 4th, which I think is going to be my only
resort to fixing this. If anyone has any suggestions other than that, I'm
open to suggestions.
TIA!!

 

[Ed Cryer]

Win7 HP SP1 32-bit, Asus M4N68T-M V2 MB, 4GB RAM, 465GB SATA-II HDD
(415GB free), Nvidia GT 240 video card w/ latest driver.

Recently (within the last 2 or 3 days; I'm not exactly sure), my cards
in Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, and the tiles in Mahjong
Titans have been flashing, like the cursor is rapidly passing over each
card. The only way to start a new game is to press F2 and then Enter;
the mouse won't allow me to pick anything from the menus since they just
flash like the cards do.

Some of the things I've tried in order to resolve this issue are:
Scanned for malware (MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and MSE) - each
came back clean
Ran SFC /SCANNOW - no problems found
Restored back to July 5th - no joy there either
Clean boot - no joy
Safe Mode (with and without Networking) - no joy
Uninstalled my video driver and tried the standard Microsoft VGA driver
- made no difference
Replaced my wireless mouse with a PS/2 one - no change
Rebooted without my Microsoft KB - no change
Turned off Windows Aero - no change
Removing and reinstalling the games through Windows Features - made no
difference I realize that doesn't truly uninstall it)
I even tried copying the folders from my other Win7 machine, and that
didn't work either.

I have other non-Microsoft card games that work just fine, and no other
non-Microsoft game is affected at all. I just tested Chess Titans to
what it does, and it's screwed up, too. I can't select any piece other
than the left-most pawn.

I have a system image from July 4th, which I think is going to be my
only resort to fixing this. If anyone has any suggestions other than
that, I'm open to suggestions.
TIA!!

That just has to be virus-produced! And possibly quite a new one, too.
If I get you aright, then the only problems you have are to do with MS
games. Nothing else affected; no other games, no browser, no email, no
other display anomalies.
And the Chess Titans problem is not display-related.

What happens with Minesweeper?

Don't restore just yet. Hold on a while, and I'll support you at least.
It would be a nag if you restored and the problem went away; unexplained!

Ed

 

[SC Tom]

That just has to be virus-produced! And possibly quite a new one, too.
If I get you aright, then the only problems you have are to do with MS
games. Nothing else affected; no other games, no browser, no email, no
other display anomalies.
And the Chess Titans problem is not display-related.

What happens with Minesweeper?

Don't restore just yet. Hold on a while, and I'll support you at least. It
would be a nag if you restored and the problem went away; unexplained!

Actually, Chess Titans is display related, too, I think, but maybe not; the
"choice" box will only select the left-most column (I should say that
instead of 'row' I think). I might uninstall IntelliPoint and try an older
version. I've had this version installed for over a month now, but I did
have problems with it in WinXP. Maybe an update or something triggered a new
problem in Win7.
I tested Minesweeper, and it's that way also- no matter where I move the
selection box, as soon as I stop moving it, it goes to the left-most column.
I found on it that if I double-click just right, I can select somewhere
else, but it's not good enough to make it repeatable (or playable). Chess
just automatically goes to the first column, which makes it just the white
pawn that I can pick. If it's malware, it seems to be very selective. I'll
try another scanner, maybe ESET Online- I've heard good things about it. I
have a Kaspersky AV Boot CD that I may try; it'll go get an update after it
boots to it.

I started ESET and it has checked 145,000 items so far with no threats
found. I'll let it finish and see what it says.

 

[SC Tom]

That just has to be virus-produced! And possibly quite a new one, too.
If I get you aright, then the only problems you have are to do with MS
games. Nothing else affected; no other games, no browser, no email, no
other display anomalies.
And the Chess Titans problem is not display-related.

What happens with Minesweeper?

Don't restore just yet. Hold on a while, and I'll support you at least. It
would be a nag if you restored and the problem went away; unexplained!

ESET scanned over 500,000 items on 3 drives, and found this:

C:\SR1124nx\winamp5623_full_emusic-7plus_all.exe Win32/OpenCandy
application
G:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\PDFCreator-1_3_0_setup.exe
Win32/OpenCandy application
G:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\siw-setup.exe
Win32/OpenCandy application
G:\Tempo\Updates\coretemp_1236.exe a variant of Win32/InstallIQ
application
G:\Tempo\Updates\DriverSweeper_3.2.0.exe Win32/OpenCandy application
G:\Tempo\Updates\PDFCreator-1_3_1_setup.exe Win32/OpenCandy application
G:\Tempo\Updates\siw-setup.exe Win32/OpenCandy application
G:\Tempo\Updates\siw-setup1029i.exe Win32/OpenCandy application.
(MSE found three of them at the same time. The new update must have kicked
in.)

Not really threats, but I shift-deleted them anyhow since the applications
themselves are already installed, some of them for a looong time. Rebooted;
no change in the MS games.
I uninstalled IPoint 8.0 and reinstalled 7.1. Rebooted; no change.
For grins and giggles, I rolled back to IE8 (since I did IE9 a short time
ago). Ditto.
I uninstalled the only 3 updates I've had in the last week. Ditto.

I have no idea what else to even think of trying since everything I thought
*might* be a problem isn't.

 

[...winston]

Tried a different keyboard or mouse and/or replacing (if applicable) their
batteries.

--
....winston
msft mvp mail


"SC Tom" wrote in message
Win7 HP SP1 32-bit, Asus M4N68T-M V2 MB, 4GB RAM, 465GB SATA-II HDD (415GB
free), Nvidia GT 240 video card w/ latest driver.

Recently (within the last 2 or 3 days; I'm not exactly sure), my cards in
Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, and the tiles in Mahjong Titans have
been flashing, like the cursor is rapidly passing over each card. The only
way to start a new game is to press F2 and then Enter; the mouse won't allow
me to pick anything from the menus since they just flash like the cards do.

Some of the things I've tried in order to resolve this issue are:
Scanned for malware (MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and MSE) - each came
back clean
Ran SFC /SCANNOW - no problems found
Restored back to July 5th - no joy there either
Clean boot - no joy
Safe Mode (with and without Networking) - no joy
Uninstalled my video driver and tried the standard Microsoft VGA driver -
made no difference
Replaced my wireless mouse with a PS/2 one - no change
Rebooted without my Microsoft KB - no change
Turned off Windows Aero - no change
Removing and reinstalling the games through Windows Features - made no
difference I realize that doesn't truly uninstall it)
I even tried copying the folders from my other Win7 machine, and that didn't
work either.

I have other non-Microsoft card games that work just fine, and no other
non-Microsoft game is affected at all. I just tested Chess Titans to what it
does, and it's screwed up, too. I can't select any piece other than the
left-most pawn.

I have a system image from July 4th, which I think is going to be my only
resort to fixing this. If anyone has any suggestions other than that, I'm
open to suggestions.
TIA!!

 

[SC Tom]

Read items 7 and 8 under "things I tried" (guess I should have numbered
them). I didn't have another keyboard handy, so I tried "no keyboard."

 

[Paul]

Read items 7 and 8 under "things I tried" (guess I should have numbered
them). I didn't have another keyboard handy, so I tried "no keyboard."

Have you made any changes to DirectX or to the video driver recently ?

Some 3D games, the installer CD has a DirectX driver on it, and the game
may insist that one be installed. And that could change how the
system works for other things.

The other remote possibility, is the video card is going bad. You can
try playing a 3D game, or even run some version of 3DMark as a stress
test, and see if there are any other artifacts. But based on your
description so far, it's probably a problem with some 2D or bitblt
stuff on the software side.

Paul

 

[SC Tom]

Have you made any changes to DirectX or to the video driver recently ?

Some 3D games, the installer CD has a DirectX driver on it, and the game
may insist that one be installed. And that could change how the
system works for other things.

The other remote possibility, is the video card is going bad. You can
try playing a 3D game, or even run some version of 3DMark as a stress
test, and see if there are any other artifacts. But based on your
description so far, it's probably a problem with some 2D or bitblt
stuff on the software side.

I would think if it was the video card itself that the problem would
manifest itself somewhere else besides MS games.
Since I already did 4 and 6 (and did a clean install on the latest Nvidia
driver), I think I can eliminate the driver itself as the culprit.
DXDIAG shows no problems, and no unsigned drivers (DirectX 11). I haven't
run any stress tests on the system, and none of my others games have any
problems at all; they all run as they have since they were installed. It's
just the MS games. If I knew exactly what DLL and other files they needed, I
could try replacing them, but I haven't found anything on how to truly
uninstall them.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I would think if it was the video card itself that the problem would
manifest itself somewhere else besides MS games.
Since I already did 4 and 6 (and did a clean install on the latest
Nvidia driver), I think I can eliminate the driver itself as the culprit.
DXDIAG shows no problems, and no unsigned drivers (DirectX 11). I
haven't run any stress tests on the system, and none of my others games
have any problems at all; they all run as they have since they were
installed. It's just the MS games. If I knew exactly what DLL and other
files they needed, I could try replacing them, but I haven't found
anything on how to truly uninstall them.

They're part of Windows 7; Uninstall Programs, turn Windows Features on
and off.

As far as I can make out the DLL file they all use is CardGames.dll in
the system32 folder.
Mine work fine, and the file has these properties;
File Version 1.0.0.1
Product Version 6.0.0.1
2006
Size 5.92 MB

I could readily email you a copy of mine. It's worth a try.
If you want it post your address. I always use this kind of format to
beat spam harvesters.
Edatedshomedotheavenlydotcom

Ed

 

[Jeff Layman]

Win7 HP SP1 32-bit, Asus M4N68T-M V2 MB, 4GB RAM, 465GB SATA-II HDD (415GB
free), Nvidia GT 240 video card w/ latest driver.

Recently (within the last 2 or 3 days; I'm not exactly sure), my cards in
Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, and the tiles in Mahjong Titans have
been flashing, like the cursor is rapidly passing over each card. The only
way to start a new game is to press F2 and then Enter; the mouse won't allow
me to pick anything from the menus since they just flash like the cards do.

Some of the things I've tried in order to resolve this issue are:
Scanned for malware (MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and MSE) - each came
back clean
Ran SFC /SCANNOW - no problems found
Restored back to July 5th - no joy there either
Clean boot - no joy
Safe Mode (with and without Networking) - no joy
Uninstalled my video driver and tried the standard Microsoft VGA driver -
made no difference
Replaced my wireless mouse with a PS/2 one - no change
Rebooted without my Microsoft KB - no change
Turned off Windows Aero - no change
Removing and reinstalling the games through Windows Features - made no
difference I realize that doesn't truly uninstall it)
I even tried copying the folders from my other Win7 machine, and that didn't
work either.

I have other non-Microsoft card games that work just fine, and no other
non-Microsoft game is affected at all. I just tested Chess Titans to what it
does, and it's screwed up, too. I can't select any piece other than the
left-most pawn.

I have a system image from July 4th, which I think is going to be my only
resort to fixing this. If anyone has any suggestions other than that, I'm
open to suggestions.
TIA!!

Since I don't like the design of the Win7 MS card games, I copied over
the *.exe files (+ associated *.dll) from XP. If you can get them, it
would be interesting to see if those XP games behave in the same way as
your Win7 ones.

 

[SC Tom]

Since I don't like the design of the Win7 MS card games, I copied over the *.exe files (+ associated *.dll) from XP.
If you can get them, it would be interesting to see if those XP games behave in the same way as your Win7 ones.

I can get that from my XP drive, but I like the design of the Vista and Win7 ones better, along with the fact that if I
play Vegas, Cumulative, it saves my score when I exit. I'll give that a try when I get back home, just to see what it
looks like. Thanks!

 

[SC Tom]

They're part of Windows 7; Uninstall Programs, turn Windows Features on and off.

As far as I can make out the DLL file they all use is CardGames.dll in the system32 folder.
Mine work fine, and the file has these properties;
File Version 1.0.0.1
Product Version 6.0.0.1
2006
Size 5.92 MB

I could readily email you a copy of mine. It's worth a try.
If you want it post your address. I always use this kind of format to beat spam harvesters.
Edatedshomedotheavenlydotcom

From what I understand, turning the features on or off in Win7 doesn't truly uninstall it; it basically just deletes the
startup interface. The rest of the files still reside somewhere in the WinDir folders.

I have another Win7 machine, so I'll check that when I get home later. That might be worth a shot. I'll post back with
the results later.
Thanks!

 

[Ed Cryer]

From what I understand, turning the features on or off in Win7 doesn't
truly uninstall it; it basically just deletes the startup interface. The
rest of the files still reside somewhere in the WinDir folders.

I have another Win7 machine, so I'll check that when I get home later.
That might be worth a shot. I'll post back with the results later.
Thanks!

"Sfc /scannow will inspect all of the important Windows files on your
computer, including Windows DLL files. If System File Checker finds an
issue with any of these protected files, it will replace it."

I'd try that first.

Ed

 

[SC Tom]

"Sfc /scannow will inspect all of the important Windows files on your
computer, including Windows DLL files. If System File Checker finds an
issue with any of these protected files, it will replace it."

I'd try that first.

That was #2 on the list It found nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[SC Tom]

Since I don't like the design of the Win7 MS card games, I copied over the
*.exe files (+ associated *.dll) from XP. If you can get them, it would
be interesting to see if those XP games behave in the same way as your
Win7 ones.

As a follow-up to my last reply, I fired up Sol.exe on my XP drive while
booted into Win7, and it works with no problem, just like it does in XP.

 

[SC Tom]

They're part of Windows 7; Uninstall Programs, turn Windows Features on
and off.

As far as I can make out the DLL file they all use is CardGames.dll in the
system32 folder.
Mine work fine, and the file has these properties;
File Version 1.0.0.1
Product Version 6.0.0.1
2006
Size 5.92 MB

I could readily email you a copy of mine. It's worth a try.
If you want it post your address. I always use this kind of format to beat
spam harvesters.
Edatedshomedotheavenlydotcom

I copied cardgames.dll from my other Win7 machine (which runs solitaire just
fine) to this machine, and it had no effect; it still plays the same. <SIGH>
Back to the drawing board :-(

 

[SC Tom]

They're part of Windows 7; Uninstall Programs, turn Windows Features on
and off.

As far as I can make out the DLL file they all use is CardGames.dll in the
system32 folder.
Mine work fine, and the file has these properties;
File Version 1.0.0.1
Product Version 6.0.0.1
2006
Size 5.92 MB

I could readily email you a copy of mine. It's worth a try.
If you want it post your address. I always use this kind of format to beat
spam harvesters.
Edatedshomedotheavenlydotcom

As another follow-up:
I uninstalled all MS games through Windows Features, which also deleted
cardgames.dll. I also deleted gameux.dll (which was listed in the registry
as an association). I then reinstalled just Solitaire. Of course, it was
messed up still. I copied over the whole Solitaire folder, cardgames.dll,
and gameux.dll from my other PC to this one, and it's STILL messed up.
After doing this kind of stuff for twenty+ years, it's a wonder I have any
patience or stomach lining left at all

 

[Ed Cryer]

I copied cardgames.dll from my other Win7 machine (which runs solitaire
just fine) to this machine, and it had no effect; it still plays the
same. <SIGH> Back to the drawing board :-(

OK. A last shot that I get from;
http://tinyurl.com/d2f9ywp
Two methods; reduce hardware acceleration, install latest DirectX user
run-times

Ed

P.S. If you've already tried any of these, please forgive my oversight.

 

[Jeff Layman]

As a follow-up to my last reply, I fired up Sol.exe on my XP drive while
booted into Win7, and it works with no problem, just like it does in XP.

That's slightly ambiguous. Was that running sol.exe in a virtual XP
machine under Win7, or did you mean sol.exe /from/ your XP drive running
directly under Win7?

One other thing comes to mind. Are all the games that you are running
and have a problem with 64-bit? If you only have problems with 64-bit
games, and not with 32-bit, that would seem a useful area to investigate.

 

[SC Tom]

That's slightly ambiguous. Was that running sol.exe in a virtual XP
machine under Win7, or did you mean sol.exe /from/ your XP drive running
directly under Win7?

Ran it directly from the XP drive in Win7 (no Virtual XP in Win7 Home
Premium).

One other thing comes to mind. Are all the games that you are running and
have a problem with 64-bit? If you only have problems with 64-bit games,
and not with 32-bit, that would seem a useful area to investigate.

I have nothing 64-bit (other than my CPU )since I'm running Win7
32-bit.