Direct X and Half Life/Gunmen Chronicles

[ASRAAM]

Since installing Direct X 7, Half Life and Gunmen Chronicles are refusing to run and a message'Gunmen Chronicles requires Direct X version 6 or above. Please install direct x 6 and restart' appears.

I now have direct X 8 and i still get the same message. Does anyone know what file gunmen is looking at to determine which version of direct x is installed and if there any way to fool it into accepting direct x 8.

I am sure it will actually work if i can get it to start. When this problem first occurred i tried sierra support and there suggestion was to re-install direct x 6.

Since this pretty much involves re- installing W98 I am not too keen.

[AndyM]

You may not have to reinstall WIN98 if you use Direct-X Buster. I had to use the "Buster" program to remove the DX-8 Beta Version from my system. They let the Beta expire before releasing full version, leaving all beta users screwed...until someone here at pcmech sent some help. I think it was tiretool. Sorry I don't have the link to Buster but someone here surely does. Sounds like the best thing for you to try.
Good luck,
AndyM

[Tiretool]

I've used DirectX Buster and it seems to do what they advertise it to do. Good luck!

[ASRAAM]

AndyM and Tiretool, thanks for the help. It's given me some ideas but as yet I have failed to solve the problem.

After running DirectX buster I tried Half Life again and received the message 'DDRAW.DLL Missing'. That looked promising I thought to myself, obviously direct x has now gone and if I install the correct version things should be sweet.

I then installed the version of direct x on the Half Life CD (Direct X 6) and tried again. Guess what, same message saying Direct x 6 required.

Interestingly during the installation of direct x I was asked if I would like to RE-INSTALL it. This would seem to indicate that the installation prog knew it had been on my system before, ie direct X buster has not removed all evidence of direct x from my system.

So, my best guess is that I have buried in the registry somewhere an entry referring to either an old or new version of direct x that half life does not understand, or perhaps an old file somewhere that half life version checks and finds wanting.

The registry entry under local machine,software,microsoft,directx shows the version as 4.06.00.0318, which I believe is Direct x 6.

It would be really nice if the people at Sierra support would get back to me and tell me what it is that Half Life actually looks at to determine which version of direct x is installed on a system.

Perhaps I could then track it down.

Any further suggestions appreciated and thanks again for those received so far.

[Edited by ASRAAM on 12-28-2000 at 08:12 PM]