Bizarre desktop corruption

Now here's a poser that I can't sort out.

I have discovered that if I view or load a 476 pixel wide .gif or .png file
into certain applications whilst having a 32bit desktop the top 1/8th or so
of my desktop corrupts badly.

This happens in any 32bit desktop regardless of resolution and with any 476
pixel wide gif or png file regardless of height or colour depth. Jpegs don't
cause corruption and I have been unable to replicate the problem with any
images other than 476 pixels wide. Don't know whether 476 is the 'magic'
number of whether multiples of certain numbers may cause problems.

I discovered this whilst converting a Word document to html, Word converted
all chart to 476 pixel wide gifs which corrupted the desktop when viewed in
Internet Explorer (loading into Dreamweaver Ultradev also causes
corruption).

To confuse things further if the html file is view of a disk (my harddrive
or floppy) corruption occurs but once uploaded to a server and viewed online
the corruption does not occur!

I'm running a Sapphire 9200 Vivo with Catalyst 4.11 (all driver versions
I've tried exhibit this problem).

I am not experiencing any disk corruption and the system is stable. I can
play Halflife 2 without any screen corruption.

Is this a driver problem, a memory problem or a gfx board problem? I can't
work it out at all so any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Paul

What kind of monitor? And what resolutions are you
trying to run? I've seen goofy things like that on older
15 inch monitors that simply won't take the settings
above 800 x 16bit ... or if the vertical refresh is 85hz
or higher. Also, on newer monitors, "fast writes ON"
will do that, but it is worse than that. I wouldn't over
think a problem like this. Get a better monitor and video
card.

johns