Screen flickering when playing music in the background

[Verrucosus]

When I play EU1 with music from the Windows Media Player running in the background, the screen flickers every few seconds. Minimizing the player does not seem to help. It's distracting, but not unbearably so. Crown of the North and Two Thrones behave similarly, EU2 does not. I did not test this with more recent games.

Screen flickering has been reported in various subforums and programmes running in the background are the usual suspects. Shutting down the media player removes the flickering, but (obviously) is not the solution I'm looking for.

A thread for HoI2-DD is, as far I could see, the only one dealing specifically with music players:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?374350

In that thread, using windows media player instead of winamp is recommended as a possible fix, but with EU1 that doesn't work in my case.

The workaround of putting the music files into the game's music folder and tweaking the list does not work either because EU1 does not have a music folder. The game's own background music is on the CD. (As a side note, Two Thrones does have a music folder, but it's empty.)

My system is Windows 7, 64 bit. I'm not positive, but believe I had no flickering with the media player in the background under Windows XP, 32 bit.

 

[Nikolai II]

Ok, this is an old game so I don't remember.. is there an option to turn off the sound? Does that help? (I doubt it, but hey)

Are you willing and able to try yet another media player, and does that make a difference?

 

[Verrucosus]

The sound can be turned off from the menu within the scenarios, but it doesn't help. This is the first time in two years that I play EU1. I probably won't play more than two or three games so I don't think I'll get another media player just for that, but I'll keep the idea in mind in case I get stuck in nostalgia. In the meantime, I'll use the opportunity to dust off the old CD player. Thank you anyway, it's splendid that these old titles are still supported.