Not sure if its Emu or Game

So i am trying to play some old school ff7 (one of my favs)

I tried using pete's opengl but what i get is a blacked out combat box so under the combat action it shows no attack, item, summon or anything just solid black. As you can guess thats a little annoying. I also noticed it was speeding the game up so i changed out to Pete's DX6 d3d driver 1.77 and it slowed things to how it should be but the black box was still there. Anyone have any tips?

Specs:
Amd Athlon 64x2 dual 4200
4gb ram
1 gig dedicated gforce 9400 gt
using external HDD to run games

please if you have any ideas or solutions hit me up on here or via e-mail any assistance be it helpful or not is more than appreciated.

P.S. soon as i get this hashed out my wife wants to play some Star OCEAN! yeah i know right...man i am a nerd!

Use the latest version of PSX emulator. Its quicker, easier, more accurate and compatible, with no plug-ins to configure. Simple use of the in-built video filter makes the games look great.

It can be downloaded from the emulators section on this site.

Ok this is easy.
Pete's and pEOPS' plugins have special fixes for games like this one
On the plugin config screen in the bottom of the window you are going to see this "special fixes [...]"
this "[...]" is a button click it and check the needed fix then apply all changes by pressing ok
I would reccomend these fixes
"0x04000 fixes black area with some cards"
"0x00001 ONLY for FF7 battle cursor swirl"
Good Luck

You can slow down the game with the FPS Limit, no need to change Plugings for that