I find that whenever i use transparent parts in my bitmaps i get strange black lines that aren't supposed to show up at the border of the transparent parts. I was wondering if there was a way to get rid of these OR if there is a way to draw onto a transparent background using GDI or directdraw?ThanksSteve

Yes.This "effect" is due to the interaction between a mask bit (1,1,1) and RGB bits being to close to each other (like 1 pixel).Try increasing the size of your surrounding mask.