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Author Topic:   Faults may lie in DirectX

zengaian posted 03-13-99 08:54 AM ET
After several weeks of reading the postings here and experiencing much the same problems I decided to cross check the faults against those that are listed on microsofts directX trouble-shooting site, and guess what? The same set of faults. Perhaps instead of hassling Fraxis and Jeff in particular for another patch to fix the page fault and kernel32 and all the other errors, maybe we should be hassling Microsoft for a patch to directX 6.1.
Tyrkas posted 03-15-99 12:15 PM ET
Finally, placing blame where it belongs. While all games are buggy, when combined with all the possible system configurations and pieces of software loaded it can be difficult to figure out where things have gone wrong.
However, in this particular case, since all the problems seem to be related (according to zengaian) the solution can be traced to one common denominator: DirectX
Thanks for the info zen. I was going to post a question as to whether a particualr video card (mentioned in this forum quite regularly) could be part of the problem but you may have solved the puzzle.
axe posted 03-16-99 05:16 PM ET
Maybe off subject, but I remember hearing about a certain Creative Labs program that wouldn't run on Cyrix chips because of a instruction code in Intel's chips not being in Cyrix. There have been a lot of AMD K6 problems, maybe something similiar? Or not... heh
zengaian posted 03-17-99 05:17 PM ET
Actually that's it in a nutshell Axe DirectX 6.0 originally offered little performance improvement for Intel or Cyrix chips because it was designed to optimise code that was only present in the later AMD chips. While the newer PII's & PIII's now have this code, older systems may as well be back on DirectX 5.0.
Further news from Morgan Industries - oops! Microsoft - there is problems with DirectX 6.1 and a wide range of 3D graphics cards EVEN IF dxdiag shows that all drivers are compatible. On installation DX is replacing a lot of drivers which aren't fully supported by various bits of hardware. Their advice to people having problems with intense graphics causing pagefaults and system crashes is as follows:
1. Using system properties in the control panel remove the Display Adapter listed under the device manager and reboot the system.
2. When Windows 9x restarts it will say found new hardware (waffle). Rather than reinstalling your display adapter set it to standard VGA (or possibly SVGA). Allow the system to restart.
3. Install directX 6.1
4. Again using system properties under the control panel, go to the device manager and change your Display Adapter Drivers. Make sure you select "use drivers supplied by manufacturer" &/or "Have Disk" to install the drivers that came with your hardware or you have downloaded from their web site.
This is supposed to alleviate a fair portion of direct problems. The same can be done for sound cards, just set it originally to Microsoft compatible sound system to install directX.
Hope this helps someone... anyone
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Author	Topic: Faults may lie in DirectX
zengaian	posted 03-13-99 08:54 AM ET After several weeks of reading the postings here and experiencing much the same problems I decided to cross check the faults against those that are listed on microsofts directX trouble-shooting site, and guess what? The same set of faults. Perhaps instead of hassling Fraxis and Jeff in particular for another patch to fix the page fault and kernel32 and all the other errors, maybe we should be hassling Microsoft for a patch to directX 6.1.
Tyrkas	posted 03-15-99 12:15 PM ET Finally, placing blame where it belongs. While all games are buggy, when combined with all the possible system configurations and pieces of software loaded it can be difficult to figure out where things have gone wrong. However, in this particular case, since all the problems seem to be related (according to zengaian) the solution can be traced to one common denominator: DirectX Thanks for the info zen. I was going to post a question as to whether a particualr video card (mentioned in this forum quite regularly) could be part of the problem but you may have solved the puzzle.
axe	posted 03-16-99 05:16 PM ET Maybe off subject, but I remember hearing about a certain Creative Labs program that wouldn't run on Cyrix chips because of a instruction code in Intel's chips not being in Cyrix. There have been a lot of AMD K6 problems, maybe something similiar? Or not... heh
zengaian	posted 03-17-99 05:17 PM ET Actually that's it in a nutshell Axe DirectX 6.0 originally offered little performance improvement for Intel or Cyrix chips because it was designed to optimise code that was only present in the later AMD chips. While the newer PII's & PIII's now have this code, older systems may as well be back on DirectX 5.0. Further news from Morgan Industries - oops! Microsoft - there is problems with DirectX 6.1 and a wide range of 3D graphics cards EVEN IF dxdiag shows that all drivers are compatible. On installation DX is replacing a lot of drivers which aren't fully supported by various bits of hardware. Their advice to people having problems with intense graphics causing pagefaults and system crashes is as follows: 1. Using system properties in the control panel remove the Display Adapter listed under the device manager and reboot the system. 2. When Windows 9x restarts it will say found new hardware (waffle). Rather than reinstalling your display adapter set it to standard VGA (or possibly SVGA). Allow the system to restart. 3. Install directX 6.1 4. Again using system properties under the control panel, go to the device manager and change your Display Adapter Drivers. Make sure you select "use drivers supplied by manufacturer" &/or "Have Disk" to install the drivers that came with your hardware or you have downloaded from their web site. This is supposed to alleviate a fair portion of direct problems. The same can be done for sound cards, just set it originally to Microsoft compatible sound system to install directX. Hope this helps someone... anyone