Problem on startup

[1940LaSalle]

Here's the situation: I just bought Civ IV Complete, including Colonization, Beyond the sword, and Warlords. The installation seemed to go smoothly, or so I thought. When attempting to start Civ IV, I got an error message, thus:

Initialize Renderer failed. Check DirectX Installation, Latest Graphics Drivers and Graphics Settings Parameters:

-width = 1024
-height = 768
-flags = 0xc
-hwnd = 0xb036c
-adaptrid = 0
-deviceid = e

Error: Creation failed: Invalid 3D device type

This shows up when I've tried to start the game, and the game startup window shows "Init Engine", with the bar about 2/3 of the way across. It shows up across the board; that is, in Civ IV, Beyond the Sword, Warlords, and Colonization. The computer in question is a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Entertainment PC, model DV9000, that dates from (I think) 2008.

I don't know what any of those messages/errors mean, so I have no idea how to address them. Can someone walk me through what to do, please? Thanks in advance.

 

[Challs]

Could you post a list of your specifications on your computer? That would help a lot in solving your problem.

 

[Furiey]

Try installing the latest Directx 9c: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

Posting your dxdiag will help as Challs has said.

There are patches for BTS and (I think) Colonization that you can download from this site (don't use the in-game updater, it rarely works although it pretends it has), but as you get this error on all 4 games applying those is unlikely to cure it for plain Civ 4.

 

[1940LaSalle]

I hope this is what Challs and others were requesting; if not, speak up but please let me know more specifically what you wanted to know:

Operating system: Windows XP Professional version 2002 (service pack 3)
Computer: Intel Core CPU; T7200 @ 2 GHz; 2 GB RAM
HP Pavilion DV9000

 

[Furiey]

To run dxdiag in Vista:
Press Start button,
in the search box type dxdiag dxdiag.exe will appear above, click on it to run,
click the button to save all information as a text file,
attach the text file to a post in this thread.

Have you tried installing the latest version of directx 9c as I suggested?

 

[1940LaSalle]

OK, here we have the dxdiag results. I never knew this existed until I saw this post a few minutes ago. Download/installation of that DirectX 9C is pending since I just got here.

 

[Furiey]

Very strange, you do not appear to have a proper driver installed for your video card. Even if you have on-board graphics you should have something other than the basic vga driver. The dxdiag does not even identify what you have, do you know what sort of graphics card or onboard you have?

 

[bwcbwc]

Try going to HP's website and see if you can download a video driver. From what I've seen in a Google search, the DV9000 is a core2 Duo 17" laptop. In that case it's most likely to have an Intel graphics chipset, but could have an nVidia.

I'm not sure of the exact time frame and model numbers, but there was a period sometime in the past couple of years where nVidia graphics on various laptops including HP had all sorts of problems due to issues with the graphics chip design. It could be that your GPU is 99 44/100% fried, which is why it's fallen back to VGA. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137385/nvidia-bad-bump-misery-deepens

The good news is that if it is an nVidia component, it's a discrete graphics unit, so it should be replaceable. Though the cost of replacement may not be worth it to you.