blam666 wrote on 2022-10-25, 13:24:

I guess my graphics card on an older laptop of mine is not compatible with dgvoodoo at all, all games I try to start with dgvood […]
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I guess my graphics card on an older laptop of mine is not compatible with dgvoodoo at all, all games I try to start with dgvoodoo (newest version 2.79 as well as old version 2.54) will inevitably crash the start-up with error messages like "Direct Draw could not be initialized". I'm running the very old cheap onboard GPU ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 on newly installed Win1064, although the card doesn't even have official Win10 driver support. I installed a custom driver to be able to install and use the Catalyst Control Center (it's listed by the CCC as 8.97.100.9001-150113a-179335E-ATI version). So it's not much of a surprise I encounter problems with dgvoodoo, although some alternative wrappers like DDrawCompat still seem to work well with that card. I think it's most probably a GPU issue, because the games are able to start in Direct11 MS WARP (software) mode, but crash every time I choose feature level 10.0 or 10.1 under Rendering / Output API in the dgvoodoo Control Panel.

Strangely, the cheap onboard Radeon card is listed as Direct X 10.1 compatible at some sites:

DirectX 10.1 (10_1)
Shader-Model 4.1
OpenGL 3.3
OpenCL 1.1
Vulkan N/A

Sorry if I'm mistaken here, I'm an absolute noob about dgvoodoo and older GPUs, but shouldn't that be enough (read something about feature level 10.1 and directx 10 support) to make dgvoodoo work on a system like that?

Would be great if anyone with more dgvoodoo knowledge could help me out and tell me I'm on a dead end here and should stop trying and spend time with this problem - or is there indeed some workaround to get to at least some games to run with dgvoodoo help on this card after all?

Have you edited the configuration of dgVoodoo to use D3D11 feature level 10?

Hi, thanks for replying!

I selected

Direct3D 11 (feature level 10.0)

and

Direct3D 11 (feature level 10.1)

in Output API in General Tab of the Control Panel.

But both crash everytime I start anything with it.

Only Direct3D 11 MS WARP (software) lets programs run.

blam666 wrote on 2022-10-25, 16:01:

Hi, thanks for replying! […]
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Hi, thanks for replying!

I selected

Direct3D 11 (feature level 10.0)

and

Direct3D 11 (feature level 10.1)

in Output API in General Tab of the Control Panel.

But both crash everytime I start anything with it.

Only Direct3D 11 MS WARP (software) lets programs run.

Iirc the Microsoft driver won't allow anything other than WARP. So that's the problem probably?

Which Microsoft driver do you mean? Dgvoodoo usually runs without hassle on my other Win1064 systems (one desktop and two other Laptops). I had it running out of the box there.

The only special thing about the system I'm trying to set up now is the old graphics card and it's drivers limited compatibility with Win10 as far as I can see.

blam666 wrote on 2022-10-26, 18:43:

Which Microsoft driver do you mean?
The only special thing about the system I'm trying to set up now is the old graphics card and it's drivers limited compatibility with Win10 as far as I can see.

I meant "although the card doesn't even have official Win10 driver support. ". Probably as WDDM driver models are different between OS and driver, it's a problem. But the most correct answer can be given by Dege only. In the meantime I think it's better if you try other games with dgVoodoo2 on same machine; at least that can give an idea on what the problem is.

Ok, thank you for clarifying. Actually, ALL applications and games I tried crash on that machine as soon as the dgvoodoo ddraw.dll is involved, giving me "ddraw could not be initialized" error messages. I tried older dgvoodoo versions with no success, as soon as any program redirects the ddraw call through dgvoodoo, message pops up (while the WARP software mode still works with any of them, but ofc doesn't provide the features I need.) Strangely, some game installs that use comparable wrapping methods, like NGlide, cause no problems at all on the same system. Even a vintage game install that only uses a modified version of dgvoodoo' ddraw.dll (and none of the other dll) crashes at start with the same message, though.

What I'd be interested in is if there is some fork or modification of dgvoodoo that is reportedly better working with older, esp. Radeon cards? Iirc I think I read AMD hardware is causing problems quite often with this wrapper, but I don't know much about those issues so far.

I tried about 5 or 6 different cases, I can ofc still try a handful of others to see if anything new happens, but IMHO it seems very much a system/driver issue at play here, not a specific game issue, all these applications i checked work fine on my other Win1064 systems along with the dgvoodoo drivers.

Good example for this was that I installed older "Undying" game on that system and the game seems to run fine, but as soon as I tried to apply a new widescreen patch for it that uses dgvoodoo to make some textures have the correct size, it crashed at the start with black window and freezes (this is what also can happen, sometimes it gives that ddraw error message, sometimes games will crash and freeze, so I have to restart my whole windows system again.)

blam666 wrote on 2022-10-26, 20:50:

Ok, thank you for clarifying. Actually, ALL applications and games I tried crash on that machine as soon as the dgvoodoo ddraw.dll is involved, giving me "ddraw could not be initialized" error messages. I tried older dgvoodoo versions with no success, as soon as any program redirects the ddraw call through dgvoodoo, message pops up (while the WARP software mode still works with any of them, but ofc doesn't provide the features I need.) Strangely, some game installs that use comparable wrapping methods, like NGlide, cause no problems at all on the same system. Even a vintage game install that only uses a modified version of dgvoodoo' ddraw.dll (and none of the other dll) crashes at start with the same message, though.

What I'd be interested in is if there is some fork or modification of dgvoodoo that is reportedly better working with older, esp. Radeon cards? Iirc I think I read AMD hardware is causing problems quite often with this wrapper, but I don't know much about those issues so far.

This again points to the fact dgVoodoo2 is unable to use the non-WARP methods with MS driver. I recall the same happening on a supported NV card with MS driver. Unfortunately, all I can say is you need the vendor driver for it to work. There can be other solutions, but it's all I know.

Thank you very much!

Yes, looks like it, Windows 10 provides some native driver for that card, but it's not a complete supported driver by ATI, so it's probably because of that. There is no vendor driver support for this GPU for Windows 10.

The laptop came with Windows 7 originally, which still had driver support for that card, but it's been upgraded to Windows 10 by now and I don't think I'm interested in rolling it back for this one issue.

But if anyone else also has had similar experiences and some tip or even some workaround or knows of some modded driver for similar issues, I'd be happy to hear about that.

So, if the problem is on driver/D3D11 side then you can install the MS DX debug layer for more detailed information.

See this topic, from this post:
Re: A newbie problem

blam666 wrote on 2022-10-27, 23:48:

Yes, looks like it, Windows 10 provides some native driver for that card, but it's not a complete supported driver by ATI, so it's probably because of that. There is no vendor driver support for this GPU for Windows 10.

The laptop came with Windows 7 originally, which still had driver support for that card, but it's been upgraded to Windows 10 by now and I don't think I'm interested in rolling it back for this one issue.

You could try installing the Windows 7driver under Windows 10. I've had success with other old hardware/new OS combinations before. (Like a motherboard that only had Vista beta and XP drivers working under 7)
Jut saw there are also Windows 8 drivers (Catalyst 13.1 and Catalyst 13.4 beta, both older than the 13.9 for Windows 7)
They are older, but 8 should be closer in design to 10 than 7 is. So might work better. And since all of them are almost a decade old now, it shouldn't matter anyway.

The 13.1 is version 8.97.100.7,
the 13.9 is version 8.97.100.11,
the one that Windows 10 sends is 8.970.100.9001, which should be somewhere between 13.1 and 13.9

Still rough work, but might still run better than the drivers Windows 10 delivers.

Very sorry for digging this out after several months, I stopped following this thread 2 weeks after my last message, so I missed there were new replies to it.
I will add this because there was an advice to create and check a log file and this may still be helpful to others who have similar problems.

@dege: Hello, thank you very much for the reply and the tip. I read the other thread and installed debugview++ and the Win SDK kit. I certainly did something wrong and dumb, because there was no dxcpl.exe in my Win/System folders after doing that. I downloaded a single release of that program and followed the rest of the instructions, though. Maybe it is still helpful to a degree? This is what debugview++ showed as error message when starting a certain game with dgvoodoo in non-software output API mode:

1 0.000000 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe FTH: (5368): *** Fault tolerant heap shim applied to current process. This is usually due to previous crashes. ***
2 0.173507 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
3 0.186359 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
4 0.233704 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
5 0.246592 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
6 1.184544 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
7 1.197690 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
8 16.108058 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
9 16.122884 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
10 22.176814 5368 dgVoodooCpl.exe <process started at 03:00:43.022 has terminated with exit code 1>
11 26.365935 3244 necro95.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
12 26.374629 3244 necro95.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
13 133.190426 3244 necro95.exe <process started at 03:01:09.123 has terminated with exit code 0>

@lordmogul: Thank you very much, too. I think I messed around a bit with vintage Windows 8 drivers a bit when I encountered the problem first, but iirc I wasn't able to install any of them properly. But I may try again with the specific versions you named soon and try to be more thorough with it. If I find the time and get somewhere, I will post any solutions or hints here.

Here is another log for a game that crashes with dgvoodoo in all non-WARP/software modes:

1 0.000000 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse WARNING: Processor detection code: benign first-chance exception possible
2 6.829015 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: 3D Hardware card could not be identified by Vendor/Chipset ID
3 6.829101 10020 PoP3D.exe
4 6.829192 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Card information:
5 6.829192 10020 PoP3D.exe Card name: dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper
6 6.829192 10020 PoP3D.exe Vendor:0x00000000
7 6.829192 10020 PoP3D.exe Chipset:0x00000000
8 6.829273 10020 PoP3D.exe
9 6.863630 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Attempting to open HW device
10 6.863710 10020 PoP3D.exe
11 6.878497 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Device supports per-pixel z-based fog
12 6.878811 10020 PoP3D.exe
13 6.878902 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: 2x (Execute) AGP support detected
14 6.879008 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Device open succeeded
15 6.879082 10020 PoP3D.exe
16 7.056608 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Supports vertex-first single pass multitexturing:
17 7.056736 10020 PoP3D.exe 392 modes
18 7.056866 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available single-pass multitexture modes: 392
19 7.056994 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available multi-pass multitexture modes: 0
20 7.057445 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available unavailable multitexture modes: 0
21 7.077129 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Using
22 7.077316 10020 PoP3D.exe : HW: DrawPrimitive
23 7.078306 10020 PoP3D.exe
24 10.948164 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse Render Shutdown: Releasing DirectDraw encapsulation object
25 10.948228 10020 PoP3D.exe
26 14.503819 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: 3D Hardware card could not be identified by Vendor/Chipset ID
27 14.504018 10020 PoP3D.exe
28 14.504162 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Card information:
29 14.504162 10020 PoP3D.exe Card name: dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper
30 14.504162 10020 PoP3D.exe Vendor:0x00000000
31 14.504162 10020 PoP3D.exe Chipset:0x00000000
32 14.504207 10020 PoP3D.exe
33 14.507788 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Attempting to open HW device
34 14.507879 10020 PoP3D.exe
35 14.512209 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Device supports per-pixel z-based fog
36 14.512268 10020 PoP3D.exe
37 14.512457 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: 2x (Execute) AGP support detected
38 14.512523 10020 PoP3D.exe Render create message: Device open succeeded
39 14.512656 10020 PoP3D.exe
40 14.689880 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Supports vertex-first single pass multitexturing:
41 14.690005 10020 PoP3D.exe 392 modes
42 14.690078 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available single-pass multitexture modes: 392
43 14.690185 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available multi-pass multitexture modes: 0
44 14.690274 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Number of available unavailable multitexture modes: 0
45 14.715064 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse D3DDriver Info: Using
46 14.715201 10020 PoP3D.exe : HW: DrawPrimitive
47 14.715320 10020 PoP3D.exe
48 43.452011 10020 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse Render Shutdown: Releasing DirectDraw encapsulation object
49 43.452064 10020 PoP3D.exe
50 44.988775 10020 PoP3D.exe <process started at 04:50:21.090 has terminated with exit code 0>
51 68.344718 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
52 68.355419 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
53 68.402642 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
54 68.413568 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
55 69.917556 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
56 69.927947 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
57 90.649019 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
58 90.659766 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
59 93.479280 9812 dgVoodooCpl.exe <process started at 04:51:29.423 has terminated with exit code 1>
60 98.025766 2452 PoP3D.exe NetImmerse WARNING: Processor detection code: benign first-chance exception possible
61 98.053945 2452 PoP3D.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
62 98.067603 2452 PoP3D.exe DXX32: Warn: Registry value too long: MainVideo_SET in SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000\UMD
63 101.428212 2452 PoP3D.exe <process started at 04:51:59.242 has terminated with exit code 0>

Interesting, the "registry value too long" error seems to pop up again.

blam666 wrote on 2022-10-27, 23:48:

Thank you very much! […]
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Thank you very much!

Yes, looks like it, Windows 10 provides some native driver for that card, but it's not a complete supported driver by ATI, so it's probably because of that. There is no vendor driver support for this GPU for Windows 10.

The laptop came with Windows 7 originally, which still had driver support for that card, but it's been upgraded to Windows 10 by now and I don't think I'm interested in rolling it back for this one issue.

But if anyone else also has had similar experiences and some tip or even some workaround or knows of some modded driver for similar issues, I'd be happy to hear about that.

Your card should have a Win8 driver. Get that
https://youtu.be/C6BCNAEpdX0

Ok, thank you for the link, seems like it could actually solve that problem.

I'll try and find some fitting Win8 drivers and try the method from that YT video, after that I'll report what happened.

Unfortunately, installing the Win8 legacy driver by Youtube video method doesn't work on my system.

It refuses to install any other but the system-provided driver even if perpetually disconnected from Internet and after several reboots with all old drivers deleted and "Basic Display Adapter" shown in device manager. It defaults any driver manually loaded to the non-Vendor/non-ATI Win10 driver (Advanced Micro Devices, 8.970.100.9001) I had before, which still causes the issue I had before with dgvoodoo.

I also experienced some sudden system shutdowns after trying this and had to do a system reset from Win save point (not totally sure it was due to this, but it quite much appeared like it), so the method doesn't seem to work on every system and not necessarily with every specific card and can cause some trouble there (although my GPU is obviously a ATI Radeon 4600 series GPU like in that video).

I actually don't mind the Win10 native non-vendor driver much and don't have any issues or limitations with it except this dgvoodoo problem. The missing CCC can be installed in a special version still along with it (ATI Catalyst 12.11 B11 HotFix 10 P6 V11.10.6.6) and loses no functionality. So optimal solution for me would still be Win10 native driver compatibility with dgvoodoo without forcing Win8 or Win7 drivers onto the system.

Ok, I made a second attempt of installing the legacy drivers and for some reason simply manually installing the inf file from the packages/drivers/display folder of the unpacked drivers without deleting it first worked easily this time.

I could see that the older official 13.1 AMD driver was active in device manager after reboot (Advanced Micro Devices, 8.970.100.7000, with the vendor signature: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. instead of the native 8.970.100.901 with the MS signature Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher).

But it ultimately turns out the dgvoodoo error (ddraw could not be initialized) pops up just the same. I tried another time with 13.4 legacy Win8 driver, still the same.

Looks like the vendor driver issue may have beeen just a big red herring and the problem is caused by some other system issue or quirk.

I rolled back the driver to the native Win10 one and everything works fine again now, but no change and no clue concerning the dgvoodoo not working issue, sigh...

I have the same issue getting older games to work with my laptops Radeon Mobility 3650 and gave up trying with dgvoodoo in the end as just figured it isn't compatible with the ddraw wrapper. I have had some success with the first versions of dgvoodoo (1.5 and 1.3) for titles that allow for 3DFX nGlide so all is not lost.

Fortunately I found DXWND still works for DirextX games almost all of the time, which saves me having to find a laptop with an NVIDIA card.

I did also roll back from windows 10 to windows 7 to see if that would fix dgvoodoo with this card but to no avail. Also have an XP partition and Dirextx games crash on startup there too. Oh well DXWND and nglide will have to do for this particular card.