Hello...first of all, I'm going to start by saying I can not affort do by the Mac versions yet (probably by June or July). I will start buying the Civ 4 series for Mac then.

Anyway...

I put Civ 4 on my MacBook (2.16 GHz; running Boot Camp & Windows XP) and I get the following error message:
ERROR
Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, latest graphics drivers and graphics settings parameters:
width = 1024
height = 768
flags = 0xc
hwnd = 0x20134
adaptrid = 0
deviceid = 3
Error:Creation failed: Invalid 3D device type

How can I fix this? Please help. I don't want to wait until June or July to play again.

Thanks.

Hello, welcome.

Where did you get XP from? I suggest you check that you have the latest version of DirectX.

Hey, AlanH.

Thanks for the reply. I bought XP; I don't like to bootleg software because then you get no support if you need it.

At any rate, I discovered that I need to have Internet connectivity on the Windows side to get the latest version of DirectX (I threw it on a flash drive and transfered it to my Macbook, but the installer insists on downloading files...AARGH!).

Can you think of anything else aside from DirectX that may help me out?

It sounds like problems with DirectX to me. The BTS install comes with a pretty new version of DirectX that should work.

Sorry, I wasn't concerned about *how* you got XP, just how recent it is.

I can't think of anything else off hand. Your graphics drivers ought to be pretty well up to date, unless, of course, you are running an old version of Bootcamp?

The worst thing about Boot Camp is Windows; even installing XP SP2 you still need to install about a zillion security patches and updates. Direct X is one of those things. You might run into something that wants .Net, too, which another thing not included in Windows.

Funny, I'm having the exact same problem. Eventually installed Windows XP (ugh) but game won't start up and I get the same error message (identical, in fact).

I would have thought a brand new purchase of XP would include the latest version of DirectX, but perhaps I'm too naive on the PC side of the fence (here be dragons!).

There's an entire thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133003) on this issue, which runs for 21 pages and I can't make head nor tail of what the solution should be.

Wiped the drive, reinstalled everything, now it works.

<Shrug>

hello

i have exactly the same prob, same message, i dont speak very well english, someone can explain to me precisely what i must do

1. In Windows, check what version of DirectX you have. For XP you do this as follows:

Click Start. Click Run. Type dxdiag. Hit Return. This opens the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. In the System tab there is a list of System Information. My DirectX Version is given at the bottom of this list as DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904). If you click Next, you may see some warnings that files are old versions, and if so it will recommend that you reinstall DirectX to update them.

2. To reinstall DirectX, use a web browser in Windows to go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3 and hit Download. This should download a small setup file called dxwebsetup.exe. Run this file to download and install the latest version of DirectX 9.0.

See if that helps.