Hello, I just purchased Baldur's Gate 1 from GOG and am experiancing a massive amount of flickering and the mouse is leaving a trail after it. I have set the application to windows xp compatability and to run as administrator, but neither have helped. Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing the issue? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Download the DXSDK from Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6812
It's a large download, but it will give you all the old DX libraries (as apposed to the latest "backwards compatible" ones)

It will also give you a way to disable Hardware Acceleration for Direct Draw.

Go to:
Start
All Programs
Microsoft DirectX SDK (June2010)
DirectX Utilities (Not the 64bit version)
DirectX Control Panel

On the DirectDraw Tab, untick Use Hardware Acceleration.

After some Google-fu, I have found that forcing Anti-Aliasing on for Baldur's Gate seems to fix the problem. For me, at least.

(please delete this post... my solution does not work in fact)

need to unninstal c++ 2010 (x64 & x86) before installing the Direct x SDK

WORKS PERFECTLY NOW!!! THANKS Olnorton The almigthy

Sorry for a bit of thread necromancy, but the flickering cursor has been plaguing me, and this fix worked miracles for me. Big thanks to Olnorton.

IE DDrawFix
http://bitpatch.com/ie_ddrawfix.html

Thanks for the reply, but this didn't work for IWD or BG2.

This fixed the problem for me too. I'm using an nvidia card here, and got it fixed by forcing anti-aliasing in the nvidia control panel. I also noticed setting AA to 2x made the circled character markers bolder in game, which I actually prefer.

BTW, if these things don't help, i also recommend reading this discussion for more tips. It's for planescape torment but should work more or less the same (the thread says its 'obsolete', but it's still useful): http://www.shsforums.net/topic/43616-how-to-deal-with-the-ddraw-problems-of-pst-and-other-ie-games/

It is working PERFECTLY on Windows 10. I have wanted for some time to replay the non-enchanted versions, with this patch it is possible. I have tested it on BG1, BG2 and IWD1.

Tip: When you install the patch there are 2 options. To make it work on Windows 10 use option 2.