DX8 Error

[DavidAndrew2008]

Hello, I'm having a lot of trouble with my graphics card since reinstalling Windows XP. It's an NVidia Gforce4 with 64mb. There are 2 problems:

 

1) Some games complain about not being able to initialize Direct X due to an "DX8" error.

 

2) OpenGL games run a lot slower on my PC despite working fine with my previous PC (which had half the power).

 

I have toothcombed the help files and have done the obvious by installing the lastest versions of Direct X and the latest driver for Geforce4. I have also (as suggested) tried uninstalling them and reinstalling them.....nothing. Other things I've tried is disabling write combing and hardware acceleration....still nothing. I don't see me PC's specs being an issue because as stated above, all of my games worked at full speed on a lesser PC with a Geforce2. I really, reallly don't see why there is a problem because all of my games are way above the minimum reqirements, (I don't bother with recent games), and some of the games are old 2D games which even worked fine on an even older PC I had back in 2000. I also don't see why I'm getting an "DX8" error when my version of direct X is the final 9c version - the documents said that the latest versions are backwards compatible. The dxdiag has run all tests and reported no problems. :confused:

[maynardvdm]

Hi

 

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4615/welcome6ld.gif to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

 

Have you uninstalled all the old versions of directX?

 

Have you tried reinstalling DirectX?

[DavidAndrew2008]

  maynardvdm said:

Hi

 

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4615/welcome6ld.gif to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help.

 

Have you uninstalled all the old versions of directX?

 

Have you tried reinstalling DirectX?

 

I have tried reinstalling Direct X, but there are no old versions of DX on it as I recently reinstalled Windows XP - the MS update automatically put DX9c on it first time round.

[maynardvdm]

Can you tell us the exact error message you are getting?

[DavidAndrew2008]

  maynardvdm said:

Can you tell us the exact error message you are getting?

I'm not posting from home at the moment so I don't know the exact error message, but I do know (from memory) that some (not all) programs complain about a "DX8.dll" not being found, this is followed by "cannot initialize direct x".

 

I have looked at all the dlls via dxdiag. DX8.dll does not seem to be there but at the same time the dxdiag itself finds no problems.

[maynardvdm]

Have you got the latest drivers for your sound card too?

 

Did you test the sound in dxdiag?

[maynardvdm]

Did you install DirectX from here:

 

Microsoft

[DavidAndrew2008]

  maynardvdm said:

Have you got the latest drivers for your sound card too?

 

Did you test the sound in dxdiag?

Yeah, the sound was a bit of a problem at first until I finally traced the correct driver for it.

 

In dxdiag I have run every test possible, everything passed

[DavidAndrew2008]

Also, it looks like my Windows XP has a corrupt registry, if that has anything to do with it. Prior to installing Windows XP on my new PC, I backed up the entire contents of my old HD and after installing XP I merged the whole lot into it. A foolish mistake I guess, because after that it started looking for my old PC's hardware. I've just read that a corrupt registry can cause Direct draw slowdown and DLL errors. I will see if a good registry cleaner resolves this.

[Goku]

Hello and Welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help David. :)

 

Never, I repeat never trust a registry cleaner to solve your problem. On the contrary, expect it to raise more problems for you. Deleting a thousand orphaned and invalid entries will not give you a tremendous performance boost or will solve your problems as they advertise, so you may want to consider alternate solutions.

 

First of all, why not try and remove invalid traces of DirectX that might have been left of previous installs. To achieve this, use DirectX Eradicator. Remove any traces the utility finds and reboot your computer.

 

Now, try and install DirectX again. Your best bet would be to download a redistributable package so that you may keep it for future instances too should circumstances demand them. You can download the DirectX Redistributable Package (June 2008) from any of the following locations.

 

DirectX 9.0c (full package)

 

DirectX Redistributable 9.0c June 2008

 

Try and see if it helps or not. Let us know how it goes. Good Luck. :)

 

-- Goku

[DavidAndrew2008]

Many thanks to both people who replied, I will try the Eradicator suggestion first and post the results next time I'm online