Trying to play the baldurs gate/ icewind dale series on windows 7 has caused me great frustration. Until i found this.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=10568

Download and install the file.

After installation...find the program folder in your All Programs from the start menu.

Find "DirectX Control Panel".

Open DirectX Control Panel.

Go over to Direct Draw panel.

Uncheck Hardware Acceleration.

DONE.

Now the game plays like the day you first played it all those years ago. I think this works for most old games like fallout and diablo.

Final note: Remeber to "Enable" Hardware Acceleration after your done playing because it helps with all newer games and programs.

While this does work indeed, I rather use the alternative fix mentioned in this thread:

http://www.shsforums.net/topic/48732-ddraw-fix-for-slowdownsstuttering/

placing libwine.dll, wined3d.dll, and ddraw.dll in my IE games directories solves all issues and I don't have to disable hardware acceleration for my entire system everytime I want to start an IE-game.

ddrawfix is installed by default in all the ie games from GOG now. Really, which games?
I've played a lot of new games on high graphics setting with it disabled.