skirmish

Another temporary solution: This issue has irritated me for years as this is a game I loved since it came. As few of you have already said, it seem to be related to graphics. I tried direct draw patch, graphics patch, setting power to high performance etc. but nothing worked. Then I accidentally found a solution for the gray bar. I have a HP dv7t which has HP on-screen display feature for sound, touch pad enable/disable etc. so when the gray bar appears, all I had to do was to press some key to get the on-screen display show something. Hope this helps someone.