Well been hard at work trying to fully understand this. It turns out XP is not the problem so that only leaves Directx V 9 which I will check.

I have changed: Motherboard, CPU, G Card, memory, OS, delphix , undelphix version. delphi version (from 4 to 7), service packs.

Infact I have changed everything and still...timers running wrong, game running wrong EVEN in idleloops.

It is a most bizarre thing and the only thing it can now possibly be is DX9.

Opening Dxdiag in the background as I have said for 1 bizarre reason or another makes the game run correctly and all timers run correctly. I can hardly ask my user to do that every time they want to play the game right

I will check DX7 and see what happens.

edit:

Win2000 with directx 7 didn't solve anything. Same thing. So something even more wrong than I first thought.

I will now go back to win98 and test that but if all you guys have 0 probs, then I am stuck! I mean what the hell could it be? My monitor? That is thew only thing left to change!