Are your graphics drivers up to date?
You may also want to take a look at your DirectX settings.
Windows7 includes DirectX11, which is backwards compatible with DirectX10.1 and DirectX9.0c . However, Windows7 does not include the library updates of DirectX9 that were released after version 9.0c . Certain games running on DirectX9 maybe install (parts) of these libraries in order to play correctly and are therefore capable of creating bugs within the DirectX libraries.
Something you may want to try is downloading and installing the latest DirectX9 libraries. They do not appear in Windows Update, but you can find them here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.asp...2a3&displaylang=en
As you can see, the latest version is barely 3 months old.
Note I am only telling you this because Windows Live Messenger 2011 users on external sources have reported that installing DirectX9 fixed the problem for them.
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