Sudden Intermitent Screen Flicker Problem

this extremely annoying problem started the other day after i ran an energy report, which btw was the first thing i had done on the computer that day. so the energy report may or may not have something to do with it.

the problem could be referred to as several things really, jittering,

flickering, flashing, even kind of a bounce maybe....its just real quick, a split second at a time. depending on what im doing, it can be as often as every 3 to 5 seconds, or just intermittently.

heres a list of when the problem occurs.

1. watching vidoes online. hulu.com so far is the worst. picture flickers every 3 to 5 seconds. Internet much better, just every so often. watched one full show on nbs.com. didn't flicker once....!!?

2. flickers in game loading screens but not in game. thank god!

3. also when i launch an app or maybe a video offline it'll flicker once as it launches.

here's when it dosent occur.

1. in games. (outside of the loading screen of course)

2. outside of watching video online there is no problem as far as browsing etc.

3. no flickering on the desktop, or when navigating though windows.

to fix the problem ive tried windows restore, and reinstalling my video card drivers. neither fixed my problem. outside of doing a reformat i dont know what else to do.