3d acceleration unable to start

Symptom:

In a fresh installed PC with ATI Radeon (Sapphire) HD 2600 PRO 512MB AGP card Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X is not starting. FS9 silently quits before displaying the main menu screen, FSX displays a black window only. FS9 starts normally in safe mode: fs9.exe -SWREND (software rendering, i.e. not using the cards features).

DirectX diagnostic tool dxdiag.exe Display tab/Direct3D test gives error: "Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Generic failure)".

Environment:

Sapphire HD2600 PRO 512MB AGP
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILRS AGP motherboard
AMD XP Athlon (Palomino) 2600/2 CPU
1GB 400MHz DDR RAM
Win XP Prof SP2 HU
.Net 1.1, 2.0, 3.0
DirectX 9.0c

Tests

The following drive versions are tested from http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/radeonxprevious-xp.html:

6-12, 7-7, 7-10, 7-11 and the newest one 7-12

Other pages like http://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/9395/ seems to forward the same pages during download.

Also the driver set from the card's own CD is tested. It is said to be Catalyst 7.10.

Also latest driver from http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php is tested.

Results

All driver sets from the ATI page fails. Earlier versionas fail with message:

"Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit."

7-11 fails with:

"Setup was unable to find components that can be installed on your current hardware or software configuration. Please make sure you have the required hardware or software."

7-12 fails with no error message! Does not install any drivers.

The so called 7-10 version on the card's CD detects the card and installs normally!

The driver from Sapphire tech web page also installs normally.

Analysis

It seems that ATI leaves out the RADEON AGP cards from the installs. In the CX_*.inf files the following line is missing:

"ATI RADEON HD 2600 PRO AGP" = ...

This line exists both in the inf file of the CD of the card and in the package from Sapphire Tech.

Comments

I can not recall what had caused the problem for me at the first place. Maybe I immediatelly skipped the CD as I saw it is 7.10 and started with the drivers from the ATI page (recent one 7.12). Or maybe I started with the CD, but it had failed for a reason I can not examine now. Meanwhile I had updated the rather old NVIDIA nForce chipset on my motherboard and I do not want to reverse for the previous one for testing.

The most importatn thing is that for these video cards one should check the http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php page for new drivers instead of the ATI page. However the driver package is some 234MB here and the Catalyst package is 197MB. This is 10 times bigger than that of the same packages on the ATI page. One should check the reason.

Now I selected the version on the CD that includes all the ATI tools as well in a nice package.

Gabor

I recently bought a Radeon HD 2400 Pro AGP card, and now I am also having troubles getting 3d acceleration to work. When I run the dxdiag direct3d test, it fails at step 8. when I try to use the catalyst 7.7 drivers my settings are set to the lowest color and resolution and I can not change them. I have Directx 9.0c and I have adjusted my aperture to 128. If anyone can lead me to a fix, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Brendino

Brendino!

Read my previous post! I solved the very same problem for myself. The driver (Catalyst) versions on the ATI page does not support the AGP cards. I finally used the 3 month old driver that came on a CD with my card and that is working OK. Also you may try the drivers on:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php

During my problem solving I also increased the BIOS value "AGP Apperture Size" from 64MB to 128MB or 256MB. This work fine, but I think it was not the problem, but the wrong drive from the ATI page.

Is this a new PC, or just a new card? What was your previous card? Did it work fine with 3D acceleration?

Gabor

This is just a new card. My old card was a Radeon 9250 and it worked just fine with the 3d accelerator. Ive tried a bunch of different driver versions, but ill try some again from that site and tell you what happens

You also need to ensure that your chipset drivers on your motherboard are up to date.

*The fix that I suggested seems to not work with the HD2400 and HD2600 series cards, they don't like the old drivers and the new drivers don't support AGP.

The simple fix for this is for ATI to bring back 100% support for AGP on their next version drivers. Or put out 2 separate drivers, one for the pci-e cards and one for AGP cards. Why do they not see that. Guess that's why Nvidia is kicking their ***

So basically what can we do if we have a HD 2400 or 2600 card? Is there no way to get 3d acceleration working. Also, where would one find up to date chipset drivers?

What card do you have exactly. Who made it, i know its an ATI based gpu but is it something like Sapphire HD 2400 or Powercolor HD 2400. sometimes its works getting the driver from the other company

It's a Visiontek Radeon HD 2400 Pro
and I made sure my chipset was updated, and I tried literally every driver I could find (ATI, omega, visiontek, and the site that was posted earlier) all with no avail. I am just going to give up and find me a different card haha.

http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#AGP

you may want to read this first

Tried that, still didn't work for me >.<

Brendino,

I learnt something. It worked for me because my CPU clock was set to extremely low. Now I set it to normal speed and Direct3D is NOT working. I made several tests switching back and forth. Not a good thing.

I recently check it with the latest Sapphire driver. I will report...

Now I checked the latest Sapphire driver:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php

This includes AGP cards (the driver packages from ATI are not). It works the same as my original driver on the CD of the card. If the CPU frequency is set to max 1.5GHz (see my config in the post on 23/12/2007 above) then Direct3D test works, if it is set higher it is not and giving the wellknown error message.

I do not know how to go on. Maybe older drivers worked with these higher speed. In this case it is a problem with the drivers. Otherwise it is a speed synchronisation (hardware) problem. This goes beyond my knowledge.

It worth a test for you as well. Lower the CPU speed if you can and check dxdiag.exe

Gabor

Tanks Ghrasko Very Tanks

The Page Have Patch For Repair Cards Hd 2600xt Vision Tek
Directx 3d Is Repair With Patch.

Now Play Games

OK, as I see there is a hotfix for something like this at
http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php

Meanwhile I switched to PCI-E motherboard and a different card, so you are on your own with testing it, but if I understand Twistek correctly, it solves the problem.

I'm having a similar problem but I have an Nvidia GeForce FX Go5200.

My Diagnostics say

DirectDraw test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 7 test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 8 test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 9 test results: Failure at step 8 (Creating 3D Device): HRESULT = 0x8876086c (error code)
_______________________________________________________________

Direct X is up to date, GeForce drivers are not, and can't be installed.
Trying to install from Nvidia's website I get a message like
"setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. Setup will now exit"
Just like GuitaristPat

Any ideas?

Its definitely a driver problem, direct X cant get information across your drivers to the graphics hardware.

Without trying tons of different options. Your best bet it to contact Nvidia (or ATI for future reference) and submit a support ticket. They should have a special set of drivers to correct your problem.

I would first try updating the chipset drivers, make sure you have latest directX version, make sure you have .NET 2.0 Framework installed, and make sure that you have the drivers for your monitor installed, prior to attempting an install of the graphics drivers. You should also always uninstall previous driver versions before installing the new drivers. So download new driver installer, delete old drivers, run the installer for new drivers

If after contacting the manufacturer of your card, you find a solution that is not posted above please update this post with the solution that you found.

Thanks everybody! Reading through here has helped me solve the problem! Another driver version and hotfix from Sapphire have done it. I am kind of disorganized and cannot tell you more here. However, trying out things mentioned in this thread did the trick - so thanks again!

I had the same problem with the 3D acceleration not working on a brand new Radeon 2600 pro. The driver that came wityh the card wouldn't work and I was unable to download any drivers from the ATI site. Just when I gave up hope I found this piece of paper that came with the game that said for customer support visit visiontek's website.I went to the site downloaded their current driver and BANG..it works perfectly now. It seems they are the maker of the driver and their driver download has the fix in it.

This is my first post so I am unable to post the complete link. Just visit the Visiontek website. hope this helps anyone still having this problem.

Well as I said 2 post ago, you need to get the drivers from the maker of the card not from ATI/AMD. So if you have Sapphire go to their website, if you have Visiontek go to their website

im glad i found this thread!

i was just about to give up.. then i saw the post about agp aperture size and everything works great now!!!
Thanks!