First, quick summary of specs:

Q6600
Geforce 8800 GTS 320 MB
3 GB DDr2 RAM
Installed latest drivers

Ok, I was playing the game earlier today, and it was alright. Now, all of a sudden when I try to start, I get this error message: "Failed to find any DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapters in this system! Please make sure you have a DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapter and have installed the latest drivers provided by the manufacturer. This application will now terminate"

I didnt change anything at all, the game just wouldnt start for some reason.

I looked to see if it was a faulty installation of DX, but when I looked in the DirectX folder after right clicking the drive the game is and opening it, there was no dxsetup icon, nor was there a dsetup.dll file

I didnt change anything between the times I started the game fine, and when it didnt work, so I dont know why this would have happened. Different driver versions didnt help either. Any help would be appreciated.

This is usually indicative of graphics driver problems, graphics card failure, or some sort of issue with directx itself.

Since you don't know what caused the corruption, it's best to rule some things out.

First of all I would run Windows chkdisk to rule out any physical hard drive errors. Right click on tools tab and click the box under error checking.. In Vista I can't remember off the top of my head but it's not hard to find. Check BOTH (total of 2) boxes and then click okay. It will tell you that it must schedule a scan when you restart your computer. Tell it okay. When you restart it should come up to a blue screen which does the scan. If for some reason it boots straight to windows, then you'll have to try it again. It could take over an hour to complete depending on the size of your hard drive.

I would also do a spyware/anti virus scan. Before scanning, make sure to show system files and hidden files. You can do this by opening any folder on your computer and going to the tools link at the top -> folder options -> view tab. Click both "Display the Contents of System Folders" and the box which says "Show Hidden Files and Folders". Also you will want to disable system restore. This is because if you have baddies lurking sometimes system restore will reinstall them once you reboot.

I would use two spyware scanners such as AVG anti spyware, Spybot or Webroot Spy Sweeper. If you have McAfee or Norton I would uninstall it and get a better anti virus program. AVG and Avira are both free and better than both of those. Other good pay ones are AVAST!, and ESET NOD32 - both of which have free trials. It may be helpful to do all this in Safe Mode.

Once you're sure there's nothing wrong with your hard drive and you don't have any malware/viruses lurking, I would try updating directx and doing a fresh installation your drivers. Meaning uninstall all mentions of nvidia software/drivers from add/remove programs, restart your computer, and then reinstall the latest. You'll have to restart again after the installation. There's also a way to do a fresh install of directx but sometimes that gets messy so for now just update it.

Newest Graphics Driver (XP): http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html
Vista 32: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvis...77.41_whql.html
Newest Directx: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&DisplayLang=en

If this doesn't work you may try opening up your computer and reseating the graphics card. This means unplugging it from its slot and cleaning the slot out with something like compressed air and then making sure it is securely plugged in, including making sure the extra power cord from the power supply is plugged into it.

You may need to fully uninstall and reinstall your game after this. Make sure to back up your entire EA Games folder under My Docs if you want to save your game files. You can replace them only after you have fully reinstalled, and patched your games. Looks like you have the base game and two expansions? So you need to download 3 patches, if this is the case.

Last edited by callistra : 12th Jul 2008 at 09:13 PM.