10/4/2002

This page has not been updated in a very long time. Why? Because, um, well I have a life to live outside of computers. So anyway, don't expect anything new or exciting on here. Just thought you'd like to know.

7/20/2002

I've been playing the new Army game, and suffered a rather odd problem... it refused to start because it could not find my 3D hardware. Running dxdiag gave the following error: "D3D8 Test Result: Failure at step 5 (GetDeviceCaps): HRESULT = 0x8876086a (3D not available)" A bit of Google research revealed that other people have been suffering the same problem, on titles such as Warcraft3. It appears to be an issue with DirectX. I spoke with a Microsoft support tech, and am posting the solution here so that it will hopefully help some other unfortunate souls:

  1. Start dxdiag, and click on the "Display" tab (or "Display 1" in my case)
  2. Where it says "Direct3D acceleration: Enabled" you will see a button marked "Disable". Click it.
  3. Surprise surprise, a dialog box will pop up asking if you want to ENABLE your 3D acceleration. Of course you do. "Disable" button will be unchanged in dxdiag.
  4. Press the Disable button again. This will really disable the 3D.
  5. And then click it one more time (it reads "Enable" now). Congratulations, you're done!
In my experience, this will solve your problems. DirectX (and thus your games) can recognize your 3D hardware. You do NOT have to go through this every time, the solution should persist even after a (or many) reboots.

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