Windows 7 Screen Flicker Fix

VMWare, Crystal Reports, Firefox, and others

Posted by Michichael on Thursday February 11, 2010 11:51 am

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, you probably don't use Windows 7 with VMWare or Firefox. There are a few things that freak windows 7 out, and the VMWare vSphere client is one of them - having it open will subject you to massive full screen redraws, artifacting, and screen flickering - seemingly at random, but often when the program is starting up or you are in the middle of something critical and forgot that it was open, so it freaks out the whole OS.

So far, the only solution has been to disable Aero entirely, which is the root of the problem - some may make the argument that Aero isn't a necessary business component but DAMNIT I LIKE MY EYE CANDY. I crashed out of a very important document as a result of this today and that was the last straw. I vowed to fix it. Imagine my surprise when I did it on the first try.

"But what did you do?!" you cry? Easy - compatibility mode > Disable visual themes.

You see, if you disable desktop composition, which is the "Aero" setting, it turns it off for the entire desktop while the program is running. Not ideal! However, if you disable visual themses in compatibility mode, you're set to go! Here's how you go about doing that..

1. Right click on your program.
2. Select properties.  
3. Select the"Compatibility" tab.
4. Check the box next to "Disable visual themes"
5. Click OK.