hyttenhoof: No responses on this, gonna gently bump it.
Since you already tried no3d and -doublebuffer and what not, i'd suggest to kill the explorer before launching the game. How do you do this? It's easy, just follow my instructions:
1. Take a look in the installation folder and locate the .exe file of the game (should be something like
"arcanum.exe" -- not sure though because i don't currently have the game installed)
2. In the same folder where the .exe file is, make a .txt file. Make sure you can see the
file extensions (you should be able to see the “.txt” after the filename)!
3. Rename the text file you've just made, to a batch file
by changing the extension from .txt to .bat.
4. Rename your .bat file to
"arcanum-fix.bat". Then we'll need to write some stuff into it; go into edit mode
(right click -> edit) and copy paste the following three lines:
taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe arcanum.exe start explorer.exe <!-- please note that if the .exe of the game isn't named as "arcanum.exe", then in the 2nd line of the above commands write the correct .exe name as it appears in the installation directory) --> 5. Save the file and then launch it. You'll see that the colors/desktop may turn somewhat fuzzy before the game starts, but that's normal.
What we've just done is we killed explorer.exe
(first line), launched the game
(second line) and when you close the game, the Windows Explorer will restart
(third line). Hopefully, it will fix your problem. If not, you can safely delete the .bat file. Also, if this fix works for you, you can make a shortcut of the .bat file to your desktop so you can easily launch the game each time.