Issue 41762

edited March 2011 in Game Support
A whole month and no reply? I checked my spam folder, nothing there.
I sent an email one week after the original, to say I got no answer, and that was logged as issue 42257, but 3 weeks and no reply to that. :confused:

Comments

  • edited February 2011
    KillerM wrote: »
    A whole month and no reply? I checked my spam folder, nothing there.
    I sent an email one week after the original, to say I got no answer, and that was logged as issue 42257, but 3 weeks and no reply to that. :confused:

    I sent you this:

    From:
    To: àéì ÷éøùðø <removedmail.com>
    Subject: Re: Sam & Max: Cannot initialize Direct3d
    Date: January 2, 2011 10:28 pm

    Hello,

    Whats the full error message you get?

    Thanks,

    Amy
  • edited February 2011
    Hi Amy,
    I did not receive your mail, not in my inbox or my spam folder. Maybe there is a problem on your end, since gmail is pretty reliable.
    Anyways, I guess we will have to solve this problem here.
    The error message I get is:
    "Could not initialize Direct3D. Make sure you have current video drivers and close any other applications that might be running"
    After pressing OK, I get the following error:
    "Unfortunately, this error cannot be recovered"

    This is the same for both episode 101 and 102. Didn't check the rest of chapter 1. Funnily enough, episode 201 works, but it makes a lot of references to the first chapter so I want to play them in order.

    I sent you my DxDiag file in the original mail.
  • edited February 2011
    KillerM wrote: »
    Hi Amy,
    I did not receive your mail, not in my inbox or my spam folder. Maybe there is a problem on your end, since gmail is pretty reliable.
    Anyways, I guess we will have to solve this problem here.
    The error message I get is:
    "Could not initialize Direct3D. Make sure you have current video drivers and close any other applications that might be running"
    After pressing OK, I get the following error:
    "Unfortunately, this error cannot be recovered"

    This is the same for both episode 101 and 102. Didn't check the rest of chapter 1. Funnily enough, episode 201 works, but it makes a lot of references to the first chapter so I want to play them in order.

    I sent you my DxDiag file in the original mail.

    On the Settings tab, make sure your Color Quality is set for 32 bit, not 16 bit.

    And also make sure the game is NOT in compatibility mode (right-click the game .exe, select Properties, and go to the Compatibility tab).
  • edited February 2011
    Amy Lukima wrote: »
    On the Settings tab, make sure your Color Quality is set for 32 bit, not 16 bit.

    And also make sure the game is NOT in compatibility mode (right-click the game .exe, select Properties, and go to the Compatibility tab).

    Hi Amy,
    As I said in my original mail, I already made sure that the color is 32 bit. As for the compatibility, I run the game through Steam, so I don't have direct access to the .exe, however it is very unlikely that compatibility mode is on. As I said, episode 201 works, so it is probably not a problem in my system.
  • edited February 2011
    Please don't ignore me just because my problem cannot be easily solved by changing the color quality.
  • edited February 2011
    KillerM wrote: »
    Please don't ignore me just because my problem cannot be easily solved by changing the color quality.
    I'm sure they are not ignoring you. What type of video card do you have and what resolution are you running in ? I had a issue with the first season when I ran it and set the resolution then I later reduced my desktop resolution and could not launch any of the season 1 episodes. After figuring out what I did I put my desktop resolution back and everything worked fine.

    Sometimes your graphic driver can get corrupted you might try checking to see if there is a newer video card driver you can load.

    Hope you get fixed soon.
  • SegSeg
    edited February 2011
    KillerM

    I tried to piece together what's going between this thread and the support ticket. It's only with this thread that you mentioned which games this problem occurred in, which makes it hard to help you. So in the absance of information, I'm going to take a few shots in the dark and hope this fixes the issues.


    Season One is very old (2006) and wasn't made with Win7 in mind. So there's going to be oddities no matter what. My hope is that we'll at least get to a point where you can run the game.

    1: Update the Nvidia Drivers
    Like Banned_User said, it's good to get the latest, epically with the traction the 400 class of cards are getting lately on the driver side. Direct link to the download page. (As of 2011/02/11)

    2. Update DirectX Manually
    This what I think is the larger issue. Win7 doesn't ship with the current release of DirectX 9 and the Season One installers aren't as robust with updating DirectX. My personal blog goes into why, but needless to say, I need you to update DirectX manually.

    You have two choices. If you have a consistent Internet connection, use the web updater which will download only what you need on the computer. There's an off-line version should you need it.

    3. Use "Run As Administrator" when running the games.
    The saves and preferences for Season One are saved with the Program Files folder, which breaks in Win7. You'll need to run as administrator.


    From here we'll see if this works out. What I worry about is having a system set to a language other than English. Again, old game that didn't take that into account. But we'll cross that bridge if we have to. For now, please report back after you've done each of these steps.

    Season Two and beyond started getting better about Win7 with Monkey Island and beyond working without these problems. It's just the older games (Season 1, Bone) that have these grave issues.
  • edited February 2011
    Well, I have the latest drivers for my card (Gainward Geforce 460 GTX), even the latest firmware. I updated the DirectX before, since I saw it as a possible solution on these forums. Just to be sure I updated it again and it said I had the latest version so no update necessary. I am running with full permissions.
    Tried running with several reduced resolutions, none of them worked. I am working in 1920x1080 resolution, which is native for my monitor.
    I have Hebrew enabled on my windows, but the system is set to English, and it is the default language.
    Keep in mind I am running the games through Steam, so the shortcuts to the games are in fact URL shortcuts.
  • SegSeg
    edited February 2011
    KillerM wrote: »
    Keep in mind I am running the games through Steam, so the shortcuts to the games are in fact URL shortcuts.

    I wouldn't be too surprised if the Steam overlay was causing issues. Can you try to launch these games outside of Steam? Even closing the Steam client itself?

    What I theorize is the overlay attempting to impose itself on the game. Try this and report back with the results!
  • edited February 2011
    Unfortunately, Steam doesn't work like that. You have to have it running in order for the games to work. I tried running the .exe file from its folder, but it starts up the regular way it does in Steam. If Steam is not running, the file gives an error.
  • SegSeg
    edited February 2011
    Sorry, I misunderstood you and though you had added external shortcuts to Steam, rather than bought it though Steam.

    Let's try disabling the in-lay and running the game:

    * In the Steam client (without the game running yet), go to "Steam" -> "Settings" in the menu bar at the top of the main Steam window.

    * Go to the "In-Game" tab.

    * Uncheck the "Enable Steam Community In-Game" box.

    * Hit OK

    * Launch one of the games and report back with the results!
  • edited February 2011
    Tried it, got the exact same error as before.
    Tried to run the game with Steam in offline mode, but still getting the same error. I don't really see why any of this should affect D3D initializing =/
  • edited March 2011
    Bump? Anything?
  • edited March 2011
    Come on, another month and no reply?
    I really want to play this game at some point...
  • edited March 2011
    Hi KillerM!

    Let's try something else. You said you found the exe file in the steam folder.
    Right click on it, select "properties" --> "Compatibility --> check "disable visual themes".

    This will make your desktop bars and icons look a bit weird, if you're using vista/win7.
    It all turns back to normal once you restart the computer, it doesn't affect anything in a bad way.

    Also, check "Run this program as administrator". (I know you wrote about having all privileges enabled... but I thought I should add this here just in case)

    click "ok" and run the game from there (even if it starts through steam. who also should have "run this program as administrator" enabled)

    Please let me know if that works.
  • edited March 2011
    Tried this. Still getting the same errors.
    Only difference this time is that when I ran Steam, it gave me a warning about running it in compatibility mode, which I ignored.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited March 2011
    Can you please post or PM your dxdiag?
    I don't have access to the Ticket system where you sent it earlier.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited March 2011
    Can you please post or PM your dxdiag?
    I don't have access to the Ticket system where you sent it earlier.
This discussion has been closed.