DirectX 8.1 hose your computer? (NetMeeting too!)

[feldon34]

If you have just made some changes in the configuration of your system, such as installing or reinstalling DirectX 8.1 and and/or you have opened Microsoft NetMeeting and then closed it, this may cause serious problems on Windows 2000.

I hope this will help others. Despite it's rarity, it will get a prominent place on the new Help page we are preparing. This definitely gets the most esoteric bug of the year award.


I was literally one step away from tearing down Win2k and rebuilding it after spending 6 hours trying to solve this problem. To recap:

Symptoms:
Direct3D doesn't work
32bpp (full color) icons don't work

Solutions tried:
Completely remove DirectX with DirectX Eradicator. Restore DirectX 7 from Win2k CD.
Completely remove nVidia Detonators from system with NastyFileRemover.
Install 41.03 nVidias which were working fine before.
Install DirectX 8.1 which was working fine before for almost 2 years.
Install DirectX 8.0a for NT/2000.
Install nVidia 43.45(? latest).

No matter what is attempted, dxdiag reports the following error when I test Direct3D:
Direct3D test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x887602eb (error code)


{WARNING: Coarse language in the linked topic}
From http://download.com.com/3302-2121-78...html?pn=6&fb=0

Originally posted by Garett:
I have an ATI 32MB All-in-wonder Radeon video card, and ever since installing Directx 8.1 I could not play a single game. I was receiving the step 8 error described in other reviews here and updating ALL my drivers didn't help at all. Even my motherboard drivers.

If you are having problems use the directx diagnostic utility by clicking Start > Run then enter: dxdiag. Click on the Display tab. For "Approx. Total Memory" mine showed "Unknown".

Also, I would run the Direct3D Acceleration test and it would give me a step 8 error and tell me there was no video memory. The game I was trying to run also told me there was no video memory. So after installing all the drivers I found nothing was improved and now I could not even run the Direct3D Acceleration test because the Directx diagnostic said it was disabled.

So I decided to take the advice of another person who put their review up here. The solution was to go into Netmeeting and turn off program sharing. I went into the Netmeeting options, but couldn't find where to disable program sharing if I was not in a call. So I clicked on Call > Host Meeting, then clicked the "OK" button, then went to Call > Exit. After that I went to my hard drive and found any hard drives I was sharing, right-clicked on it to go to the "Sharing..." option. I then clicked on "Do not share this folder".

I then went back to the directx diagnostics by clicking Start > Run and then typing: dxdiag. I went back to the Display tab and I couldn't believe it, but it now showed "Approx. Total Memory" as 32MB and Direct3D was enabled.

I'm not sure if playing with Netmeeting did it, or if removing the "Sharing" of my hard drive...but something sure did it. So after 2 days I'll finally be playing my new game. Please post if this does/doesn't work for you.

-------------------
By the way, this whole thing is Reichart's fault.

I mentioned that the System Diagnostics module that's going into the Aquarium in the near future (very light, no spyware, no sharing your info, etc.) should check to see if NetMeeting is running.

Reichart said "NetMeeting? Never heard of problems with it."

At which point I recalled several nightmarish hour-long troubleshooting sessions in the chatroom which have terminated once we discovered that NetMeeting was running and eating up all DirectX resources.

So I ran NetMeeting and tested the MA 2.0. At this point DirectX ceased working on my machine. This was 26 hours ago.

I did not think that running and CLOSING NetMeeting would still leave risidual problems behind!!! So I have been checking and trying every possible other thing I have done in the past few days (I've done a lot!).

[feldon34]

Related to this is a situation where the RAM usage for textures seems to default to 79MB and it causes the same results shown above if you are using DirectX 8.1 (I am still on 7 -- will brave 8.0a later today ). The solution is to set this RAM usage to either the lowest setting or 50% of your video card's RAM.

[Digital Lungfish]

Or for those of us that never use NetMeeting, don't worry about it.

[feldon34]

It is just scary that running NetMeeting ONCE did this to my computer. Without even asking, it made major configuration changes to the PC including:

-Turning on file sharing for every hard drive on my PC with no passwords.