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Radeon HD 4870 WC3 not working

Sampson

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Hi there, I have a Radeon HD 4870 video card, I have downloaded the 11.5b Catalyst drivers, I have Directx 11, so everything is completely updated.

However, when I try to start Warcraft 3, it says "Warcraft III was unable to initialize DirectX. Please ensure you have DirectX 8.1 or newer installed adn that your display drivers are current. DirectX may be found on your Warcraft III install CD under Options."

I downloaded and installed DirectX 8.1 (since for some reason I couldnt install it through the cd) and the same problem happens.

I used the Video Test program for WC3 as well. The OpenGL part works fine, but when I test the Direct3D, I get the same error message as when I try to run Warcraft 3.

Everything I have looked up on this or other forums seems to indicate that recent Catalyst drivers are buggy, but I think this is beyond that since I can not run the game at all. I am also unable to run other games like Age of Mythology Gold, Age of Empires 2, or Diablo 2 (which I really want to work again).

So does anyone know if theres a miracle version of DirectX or a previous version of Catalyst drivers that will let me run these games? Im sorry for the lengthy post, but Im sick and tired of hearing "hurrdurr find latest drivers"
 
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have you check the latest driver and patch?
what dx you run now?
have you check dxdiag from run?
since dx is part of system thats kinda hard if you have install the wrong version
i suggest you fresh install
 

Sampson

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Yes
DirectX 11




How do I fresh install? Microsoft forums say its a bad idea to completely remove DirectX
 
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Sampson

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I could install the OS, but I would like to explore a few other options first. At this point it doesnt look like there are others though
 
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Sampson

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I seem to have already downloaded that. I went ahead and got it and ran it, it said "DirectX setup has determined that a newer or equivalent version of DirectX has been installed already. No installation is necessary."

The thing that worries me is that NO ONE else seems to have this problem. If it were just a problem of the latest drivers not supporting older games, I would think I could find other people asking this question. Since no one else is asking, it must be a problem with my computer, even though everything is up to date. =/
 

95Viper

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DirectX 11

http://i518.photobucket.com/albums/u347/Brisingr852/Capture-1.jpg
http://i518.photobucket.com/albums/u347/Brisingr852/dxdiag-1.jpg

How do I fresh install? Microsoft forums say its a bad idea to completely remove DirectX

ummmm.... You posted this on May 27, 2011, but the date on the dxdiag is May 11, 2011.:confused:

May not help, but, you might wanna set your clock and calender in Windows, if you ran that when you posted.;)

________________________________________

Edit: Just to answer your other statement...

The thing that worries me is that NO ONE else seems to have this problem.

If you google that error message, there are a lot of people who are having that problem.

With answers all the way from: pirated version [to] Complete reinstall.

Google> warcraft iii was unable to initialize directx windows 7 64 bit

EDIT edit:

Oh, OK, 'bout the date.
 
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Sampson

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ummmm.... You posted this on May 27, 2011, but the date on the dxdiag is May 11, 2011.:confused:

May not help, but, you might wanna set your clock and calender in Windows, if you ran that when you posted.;)

that is from when i started trying to fix this, a few weeks ago. I havent made any drastic changes since then besides rolling back my video card drivers through the device manager
 

95Viper

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And, your sound card drivers are up to date?

Try this:

1. Open an adminstrative command prompt
2. Type in "sfc /scannow" (put a space between the "c" and " /") hit <enter> and let it scan for errors.
 

Sampson

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And, your sound card drivers are up to date?

Try this:

1. Open an adminstrative command prompt
2. Type in "sfc /scannow" (put a space between the "c" and " /") hit <enter> and let it scan for errors.

Done. "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

Device Manager says sound drivers are up to date as well.

Any other ideas before a clean OS install?
 

95Viper

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Sorry, I don't have any more ideas.:ohwell:
Maybe, someone else can come up with something fresh.

Just get everything(passwords, transfer licenses,etc.) you need before you go clean install... Good Luck!:)
 
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Not sure if you've tried this but just read on the Battle.net forums that a guy had this same problem, turned out to be his refresh rate on his display was set to 29 interlaced, he said switching to 60Hz fixed his problem.

I'd double check and give it a whirl, if it fixes it then it's sweet, if not I'll have another dig for you mate! :)

--Lee
 
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Hi there, I have a Radeon HD 4870 video card, I have downloaded the 11.5b Catalyst drivers, I have Directx 11, so everything is completely updated.

However, when I try to start Warcraft 3, it says "Warcraft III was unable to initialize DirectX. Please ensure you have DirectX 8.1 or newer installed adn that your display drivers are current. DirectX may be found on your Warcraft III install CD under Options."

I downloaded and installed DirectX 8.1 (since for some reason I couldnt install it through the cd) and the same problem happens.

I used the Video Test program for WC3 as well. The OpenGL part works fine, but when I test the Direct3D, I get the same error message as when I try to run Warcraft 3.

Everything I have looked up on this or other forums seems to indicate that recent Catalyst drivers are buggy, but I think this is beyond that since I can not run the game at all. I am also unable to run other games like Age of Mythology Gold, Age of Empires 2, or Diablo 2 (which I really want to work again).

So does anyone know if theres a miracle version of DirectX or a previous version of Catalyst drivers that will let me run these games? Im sorry for the lengthy post, but Im sick and tired of hearing "hurrdurr find latest drivers"

First off, forget the DirectX Web Installer. Download the June 2010 Redistributable and run that. It's not a "check the file version and ask the Internet for permission" install like the Web Installer, its just a straight Setup type file decompress install. It'll ensure you're up to the latest and greatest, especially considering you installed DirectX 8.1 which did who knows what to your DirectX 11 files. :wtf:

Secondly, I haven't seen any mention of compatibility mode, and its a good place to start. W3 wasn't exactly made for Vista-era operating systems, and Windows 7 is beyond that. Try WinXP SP2 mode and don't worry about it needing huge swaths of 64-bit enabled RAM or something, cause it doesn't and won't.

Third, connect a different monitor if yours can't go above a refresh rate of 29Hz. A lot of the older PC games made gross predictions about what resolution/refresh rate a typical monitor would have on startup and so would attempt to launch with these settings on boot and fail spectacularly if the user had *gasp* a newer monitor. If you don't have another monitor to swap out with for testing purposes, start looking into modifying the W3 startup shortcut to override the boot settings to something a little more 2010-ish. I have no idea if this is possible by the way, just something I find is typical to run into with older PC games.

Finally, ensure W3 itself is up to date with the latest patches. I think they're still keeping up with that.

Post back with results.
 

Sampson

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THANK YOU ISRAAR! You have no idea how happy this made me! I kinda wish you would post more on the thread just so i can thank it again.

And Fierce Red, thank you for such a detailed post, your help has been by far the most thoroughly helpful. I DID try compatibility mode, I forgot to mention in the initial post. The monitor was indeed the problem, I had 29 interlaced, switched it to 60hz and its working fantasically.

Since I installed so many other things of DirectX, should I still do a clean install with the June 2010 DX?

Thank you guys so much for the help!!!
 
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THANK YOU ISRAAR! You have no idea how happy this made me! I kinda wish you would post more on the thread just so i can thank it again.

And Fierce Red, thank you for such a detailed post, your help has been by far the most thoroughly helpful. I DID try compatibility mode, I forgot to mention in the initial post. The monitor was indeed the problem, I had 29 interlaced, switched it to 60hz and its working fantasically.

Since I installed so many other things of DirectX, should I still do a clean install with the June 2010 DX?

Thank you guys so much for the help!!!

No worries, and glad you got it resolved.

Yes, you should still do the June 2010 Redistributable DX Installation as it won't "break" anything. It in fact updates you to the latest version of DX9 through DX11, some files of which I'm sure made an appearance on Windows Update back in the day for fixing random issues with printers (like Windows 7 users saw last month via Windows Update) or video inconsistencies or whatever was the problem of the day back in the early 2000s.

And just in case you think you need to delete something, denoted by your use of "clean install", don't worry as simply extracting the June 2010 into a folder (I use X:\DX\) and running the Setup.exe within will replace every DX9, 10 and 11 .dll in your Windows installation with the latest version. You don't have to "uninstall" anything to ensure your DX is up to date.

Finally, a small tip for the future, just use DirectX Redistributables. Web Installers, like I mentioned, check the versions you have and then query if its necessary to download and update the files from a MS server. As you can imagine, this is prone to "getting permission" failure when troubleshooting a wonky installation. Redistributables in contrast are brute force, "put your files there NOW" installations designed for varying enterprise ecosystems and international usage. Literally, if DirectX 12 comes out tomorrow and there's only a Web Installer, those in the know wait a week or two for the Redistributable and do it right.

Have fun with W3.
 
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