Frequent Black Screen Whilst Playing Old Games

Sup duders,

So I just bought Planescape: Torment from GoG and really digging it so far. However, my experience is being severely hampered by, what I'm guessing is, a graphical bug. The bug is a black screen that will suddenly fade in and out without any obvious catalysts. I get the same bug whilst playing Abe's Odyssey on Steam and running the .exe's through compatibility modes doesn't seem to fix the issue. There's no problem with the video card overheating etc. either. Any ideas?

Specs:

OS: Windows 8 64 Bit

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 2.40 GHz

Gfx Card: nVIDIA GTX 550 Ti

Memory: 4GB

@flaminghobo:

Not sure if this will help because I have zero experience running old games on Windows 8, but have you tried checking the Disable desktop composition box in the .exe's compatibility settings? Modern Windows UI stuff can mess up old games. You might also try forcing the game to run in 640x480 from the same properties window.

@ravenlight: Tried both options. Neither of them seemed to have any effect. :(

Thanks for the suggestion though dude.

@flaminghobo:

You don't have FRAPS running in the taskbar or anything do you? Seems like disabling it helped somebody. The last thing I can think of would be to restart your computer in Safe Mode and try launching it. If it works then, your issue is some program or service that's running during Normal mode.

Good luck!