The border issues are usually related to Anti-Aliasing. Running the game without AA might fix it. If the borders you mention are the window borders, the flag "ForceKeepFocus" in ACT might fix it.

BioShock: Update your graphic card drivers to latest version available from nvidia.com and make sure to reset all driver settings to default. Do a clean reinstall, do not change any settings until you've verified that the problem still is, or isn't there.

Thief: Install the unofficial patch.

I tried to disable anti-aliasing but it didn't seem to help. ForceKeepFocus in ACT didn't work for the window border bug in Max Payne either. One thing I notice is that before and after every FMV in the Soul Reaver games my monitor goes completely black as if it's attempting to switch video modes. If I use DXWnd to run the game in a Window it works perfectly, exactly as it should. Unfortunately I want to run the game full screen and DXWnd doesn't seem to work for that.

It's worth noting that the issues with Max Payne and the Soul Reaver games used to happen before I got a dedicated Nvidia GPU, even on my Intel HD 4600 Intergrated Graphics.

I am already using the latest drivers for my graphics card. I've seen some posts online that suggest using older drivers but there are no older drivers for the GTX 970 since it is a brand new card. I supposed I could uninstall and reinstall the game but I don't see how that would help since verifying the integrity of the game files should re-download any files that don't match the ones stored on Steam's servers.

I will try the unofficial patch for Thief later today, thanks for the suggestions.

Older drivers won't make much difference in Win7. Try the flags "ForceAnsiWindowProc" and "ForceAnsiGetDisplayNameOf".

Please reset ALL graphic driver settings to their defaults, not just antialiasing.

If I use DXWnd to run the game in a Window it works perfectly, exactly as it should. Unfortunately I want to run the game full screen and DXWnd doesn't seem to work for that.

Select "Desktop" under position. That's borderless fullscreen ("real" fullscreen will do the resolution changes, so you don't want that).

@Bioshock: is High Detail Post Processing the only setting (besides DX) that matters?

@legacy of kain: I read there should be unofficial patches. Furthermore, try to set mono-core CPU affinity

@Thief: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Project

@max payne: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Max_Payne

Last but not least, DEP is set to the windows's critical process only by default. So no way that enforcing it (to exclude a single game then) is going to help

I didn't make a whole lot of changes to my drivers to begin with as I only installed them a week or two ago, but I tried resetting them to the defaults and it made no difference. 🙁

Only Post Processing seems to make a difference in BioShock.

Max Payne, the issue only happens after the intro video. I noticed the intro video is just a .avi file but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I tried using the command -window and I noticed when I do this the border I see briefly after the intro video appears stays all the time.

Here is a screenshot of that: http://i.imgur.com/ZrldxHO.png Note: The black around the outside is normal and caused by the mod, the border I'm referring to is the window border which says Max Payne 1.05.

I know I have the Widescreen mod installed, but it does the same thing without it so it's not an issue with the mod.

I'll try the unofficial patches for SR and Thief later today, as well as CPU affinity, and post back.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions.

EDIT: Adjusting the CPU Affinity doesn't seem to have made a difference, but I installed the TFix patch for Thief Gold and it seems to have fixed all of my problems with that game!

I will post back when I try the other patches.

EDIT 2: The patches for Soul Reaver didn't seem to help 🙁

Did you try dxwnd in desktop mode already? As I said, that's (borderless) fullscreen.

Not that I usually recommend running software in dxwnd when there should be no need, but you said it works except for the problem I've told you how to fix.

I tried the "Desktop" setting and it did the same thing as fullscreen. The only reason I knew that DXWnd was in effect is because whenever I used DXWnd with Soul Reaver 2 the cursor would be stuck in the top left corner and that's the way it was in the Desktop mode.

Thief Gold had the exact same problem so I'm wondering if it just needs some sort of unofficial patch which hasn't been created yet. I wish I knew how it was fixed with Thief because many older games have this problem in newer versions of Windows. 🙁

Is the problem with Soul Reaver that you can see your desktop windows and taskbar? Because the obvious solution to that would be to minimize all windows and kill Explorer. I tried on my work computer and all transitions are pretty clean after doing that, maybe 1 second of black screen (my desktop).

For Max Payne, try one of the borderless fullscreen utilities. I haven't seen that bug happen in Windows 7 yet though, only Windows 8.

Yes that's exactly the problem with SR and SR2. It's not only that I can see the desktop, but there is a good deal of flickering as the resolution changes from 800x600 or whatever I set the game at to 1920x1080 as it changes to my desktop, then back to 800x600, etc. I'm sure if I killed explorer, minimized all the windows, hid my desktop icons, and set the desktop background to black that it would hide the problem, but that's not really a fix but a work around, it's also a lot of work to go to. I was hoping there was something I could do to actually fix the problem.

For Max Payne, using BorderlessGaming will work about 50% of the time, but it doesn't always work. The rest of the apps never work for the game itself, only for the launcher, and all of them cause the game to crash upon exit.

You could quite easily write a batch script to kill explorer, launch the game then re-launch explorer once you were done playing with minimal fuss. Probably change the desktop background too, though I've never tried that.

For Max Payne, try actually telling it to run in a window (add -window to commandline), it sounds a bit weird to make it run window just for the purpose of forcing full screen, but it's worth a try.

Not a "clean" solution, but with old games you often won't find one.

Wait wait wait. I have already seen this problem.
There are intro movies played with windows built-in codecs (instead of say, ubiquitous .bik files) and game hangs.

Did you perhaps installed some codecs pack?
They are the ruin of the world.
For god's sake. Uninstall them and reset DirectShow

speaking of bioshock, is it patched to last version?

No codec packs installed. When I double click the .bik files outside of the game they open with Bink Video Player. BioShock is the Steam version and updated to v1.1. As it would turn out, BioShock 2 also has issues with corrupted textures when using High Detail Post Processing, first noticeable at the Pauper's Drop level. Here's a video of the glitch in BioShock 2 (not by me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ … A32C1A7BE#t=668

Here's a video of the glitch in BioShock 1 (again not by me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ … CbaDnd4cM#t=345

I played through the steam release of Bioshock 2 Minerva's Den? (since I refused to use GFWL to download the expansion). Never noticed any issue. Definetly would be a drive issue in that case.

I read that it's a Nvidia issue somewhere.

That's probably the place to look, if you want to, personally I don't care about a few minor graphic features.

If it's a nvidia issue, the best bet is using nvidiainspector and creating a custom profile for the game, messing around with the options.