Thanks for all the advice, but i'm fairly sure i've fixed my blank screen issue by killing the hideos.exe process before launching zinc so i'm happy with my setup now. To answer your previous question "what changed since it was working before?" well, northing. You see, I thought I had fixed it but I discovered today that if I opened GameEx, windowed it, then full screened it again the problem didn't occur. Previously when I was messing around I had windowed GameEx to change things then made it full screen again to test - masking the issue. I thought I had fixed it but then the next time I opened GameEx full screen then tried to play a zinc game it was hidden again, and there went most of my day today In answer to someone elses question comment about not being in a cabinet, correct, it's a HTPC underneath a 42" plasma telly. I have the power settings set to sleep after 15 minutes so that it will wake from S3 sleep, record something from the TV tuner then return to S3 sleep again 15 minutes later. S3 sleep is extremely cool, killing all but power to the RAM and it wakes up in seconds - ideal for a media center. I also had a screensaver come on after 5 minutes, turn off the TV at 10 and send the PC to sleep after 15 mins. I've since disabled the screensaver and TV power off, leaving only the sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity. The problem seems to be that Zinc doesn't register as system activity and when i'm about the 700 meter mark in Mr Driller the system shuts off Any ideas on this issue? MAME doesn't seem to be affected - I set the screensaver etc. to 1 minute for testing, MAME carried on working but Mr Driller was lights out by 50 meters. Cheers Ian