dreamscene/deskscapes seesm to have blown up

For some reason, anything but WMV vid based walls will not play. So far all i can use are wmv and the Globe wall, but stuff like Plasma gives a black screen with large square spots running like static all over the background. I have tried a reinstall of windows and i cant seem to figure it out. Im usin cat 7.8 drivers for ati x1900XTX, i ahve not yet tried  a driver rollback yet, but i dont think this would fix it. any sugestions?