DirectDraw Drivers

Hey Guys
Im new here. I like to consider myself failry well versed with Computers but my love of classic old strategy games is just too great despite all the XBox's and PS3's these days.

Any way Im hoping somebody can help before I tear my hair out.
I have a Vista 64 Home Premium
Dell XPS M1330
4GB RAM 2.2 GHz Core2 Duo T5900

With a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card.
Im running on the latest DirectX 11

As of late 2011/ early 2012, I was forced to reinstall windows and all my old school games/software that I had on it

EVERYTHING installed without any problems EXCEPT for my favorite game
Some of you may know it: Gangsters 2 by Hothouse Creations/Eidos Interactive

The game is made ideally for Windows 98 or XP at the most but I overcame that by running it in compatibility mode for Windows 98/ME. It also had a NO CD inserted problem but a patch for that fixed that CD issue.

The problem:
During the system Check i get a warning stating I need 4MB of Memory
Installation resumes as normal.
I go to open the game and get the a message statting it will try to determine the best video mode and that I may see a garbled display for a little bit.

Then I get the following error

IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE OPTIMUM VIDEO MODE FOR YOUR SYSTEM. THIS HAS BEEN SET BY DEFAULT TO 0

immediatly after that I get

ERROR..SORRY. UNABLE TO START GAME. CANT ACCESS THE DIRECT DRAW DRIVER

The question:
What is this Direct Draw Driver
and Why is DirectDraw Acceleration UNAVAILABLE whenever I run a DXDIAG
Where can I download one or How can I make it available.

I tried to manually adjust the hardware acceleration slidebar in display settings--Advanced settings--troubleshooting but that was grayed out stating YOUR CURRENT DISPLAY DRIVER DOES NOT ALLOW CHANGES TO BE MADE TO HARDWARE ACCELERATION SETTINGS

All efforts "update" Direct X have resulted in a smug - Detection of most recent blah blah, no installation is required

Somebody please help me
Thanks and have an awesome day!!!

Welcome to the Forum
This is the third identical post that you have made on this topic. I have removed the other two due to our policy prohibiting duplicate posts. As soon as a member with expertise in this area is available, you will be helped.

Thanks I didnt mean to fill up the boards but I wasnt sure which category to place it in! I just hope that this is the correct location for such an issue.

No problem. We know that you are new and only want help with your problem. I am sure that someone will come along that has expertise with gaming problems.
In the meantime go to the website for your graphics card manufacturer and make sure you have the most up to date driver.

according to update checks, everything seems to be up to date!
I ran a little test and installed it on windows 7, graphics are a bit garbled (in game text a little thin) but everything works fine with zero errors, funny seeing as how the guys from Tech support from game producers told me it wont work on Windows 7!

Anyway- if anybody reading this has any ideas- please help!

I think that this bulletin from MS may help
DirectDraw or Direct3D option is unavailable

Thanks for providing this
I have tried several of those options and none of them have worked.
For some reason, I cant even adjust the hardware acceleration settings on my own.
I wonder if a reinstallation of the graphics card AND/OR Direct X would do the trick
but thats way over my head im afraid and I dont want to cripple anything in my system by such an action!

I have read your post, again, carefully, and realize that you are circumventing game rules by patching the game to avoid using theCD. We cannot pursue this matter any further.

I suggest that you contact the game manufacturer or visit their site for further information about the game.

I am not circumventing anything. I own the game disc fair and square. The Patch I mentioned in my very first post was one that was developed by the game developers themselves to fix a "CD NOT INSERTED" bug. That was an original bug and that patch was offered as a fix to the original bug. Again, I am not circumventing anything as I own an original copy of the disc. Thanks

richc46 said:

I suggest that you contact the game manufacturer or visit their site for further information about the game.

Click to expand...

Thanks
I have done that and they say it is way over their head, sadly!

I think my issue stems way beyond the game development. It needs somebody with a really solid understanding of DirectX and its relationship with Graphics cards.

TKD33 said:

I am not circumventing anything. I own the game disc fair and square. The Patch I mentioned in my very first post was one that was developed by the game developers themselves to fix a "CD NOT INSERTED" bug. That was an original bug and that patch was offered as a fix to the original bug. Again, I am not circumventing anything as I own an original copy of the disc. Thanks

Click to expand...

Thank you for advising. I misunderstood your meaning.

No Problem

I'll just have to wait and see if somebody with DirectX experience reads this.

Thanks

TKD33 said:

I am not circumventing anything. I own the game disc fair and square. The Patch I mentioned in my very first post was one that was developed by the game developers themselves to fix a "CD NOT INSERTED" bug. That was an original bug and that patch was offered as a fix to the original bug. Again, I am not circumventing anything as I own an original copy of the disc. Thanks

Click to expand...

TKD33 said:

richc46 said:

I suggest that you contact the game manufacturer or visit their site for further information about the game.

Click to expand...

Thanks
I have done that and they say it is way over their head, sadly!

I think my issue stems way beyond the game development. It needs somebody with a really solid understanding of DirectX and its relationship with Graphics cards.

Click to expand...

TKD33 said:

No Problem

I'll just have to wait and see if somebody with DirectX experience reads this.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Hello TKD33 and welcome to the forums

Firstly, I want to apologise for the confusion regarding the patch. We get a lot of people wanting help with cracked software on forums and I, wrongly, thought it was just another thread like that. I reported this issue to Rich and he dealt with it based on my message, so the blame lies with me.

But, moving on. It's late now, so I'll reply to your issue tomorrow. I just wanted to post quickly to apologise, and so that I won't forget this thread as it now comes up in the list of threads I posted in

Tom

TKD I am posting, now, to remind Tom about your problem. He will get a notification if anyone posts to this thread. You are in good hands.

Great
Thanks Guys. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I did a little test and installed it on a windows 7 system and it worked fine. Funny- since the Tech support guys said It definitely wont work on a windows 7!
Have an awesome day!

Hello TKD33,

Firstly, I would like you to reinstall your display drivers:

Uninstall Driver

1. Open the start menu
2. In the search box, type Device Manager and open it
3. Expand the Display Adapters category by clicking on the little + sign
4. Right click on NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS and select Uninstall
5. Reboot your computer after that finishes

Now install the latest drivers, which can be found here:

Drivers - GeForce

I would then like you to post your DxDiag results:

DxDiag

1. Hold the
   
   key and press R to bring up the Run box
2. In the box, type dxdiag and press enter
3. When DxDiag launches, you will see a button at the bottom of the window titled Save All Information
4. This should bring up a popup with a progress bar, this may take a few minutes
5. Upon completion, it will prompt you to save a file. Save this file on your desktop
6. Open this file and Copy (Ctrl + C) and Paste (Ctrl + V) all of the text into your next post
7. Make sure you put [noparse]
   Code:

   [/noparse] tags around this log.

Tom

Tom
Thank you so much for your efforts and in going through all this.
While I understand that nothing is guaranteed in this world, Just a quick question (Sorry if it may seem like a real stupid question but I have never had to reinstall a display driver)
When I reboot after uninstalling my Nvidia, Are there any basic functionality issues that I will encounter upon restarting windows?
When I say Basic functionality, I mean
1- Can I still carry out basic windows operations such as those from Start-Control Panel etc etc
2- Can I open Chrome to refer to anything via google or this forums etc
3- If i do a system restore, will it work if god forbid everything goes haywire!!

I'll create a system restore right now just in case!
Thanks
I just want to make sure Im covered.
Thanks again for your efforts

TKD33 said:

Tom
Thank you so much for your efforts and in going through all this.
While I understand that nothing is guaranteed in this world, Just a quick question (Sorry if it may seem like a real stupid question but I have never had to reinstall a display driver)
When I reboot after uninstalling my Nvidia, Are there any basic functionality issues that I will encounter upon restarting windows?
When I say Basic functionality, I mean
1- Can I still carry out basic windows operations such as those from Start-Control Panel etc etc
2- Can I open Chrome to refer to anything via google or this forums etc
3- If i do a system restore, will it work if god forbid everything goes haywire!!

I'll create a system restore right now just in case!
Thanks
I just want to make sure Im covered.
Thanks again for your efforts

Click to expand...

Hi TKD,

1. Windows can function without a graphics card, and will therefore work without the drivers It will probably revert to a lower resolution and might prevent you from using Aero until you reinstall the drivers, but nothing damaging, you'll still have complete control over your system.

2. Yes, same reason as above

3. Yes, a system restore will clear up any problems. Making a restore point is a good idea, just in case something goes wrong

You're most welcome! Let me know if you're still unsure about anything.

Tom

Fantastic!!
Thanks Tom
I already have the driver downloaded and the EXE ready to run.
I'll get on this first thing tomorrow and report back.

Thanks again!