Direct X Error on Windows 7 system

D

d0g

Member
Hello,

I just purchased Trainz 12 and installed it. I'm having what would seem to be a Direct X issue. Before I explain it, it may help to know that my system has two hard drives: Drive C is a 232 GB SSD. Drive D is a 1 TB conventional drive. Since D has the most space available, I opted to install there, and NOT "C/Program Files/x86/..." as the installer had opted at. Don't know if that makes a difference or not.

The game runs successfully in OpenGL mode, but performance is a little laggy. When switched to Direct X mode, I get a message saying something like "Could not find file d3dx9_42.dll." I ran DXDIAG and it turns out I have Direct X 11 installed, and my drivers were updated 4 months ago. I know I've read that this version of Trainz requires at least Direct X 9, so I'm a little confused as to why the 11 version isn't effective.

Thanks!
 
You will need to update your DirectX 9 files. You can either download it from Microsoft or FileHippo, or you can use my DirectX Install Helper tool (see my Tutorial List link in my signature) to automate the process.

Shane

P.S. For future reference, TS12 requires the DirectX 9 files which are present on the system alongside the DirectX 10 and 11 files, however they are not normally up to date versions.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for the response... however there seems to be an issue. I tried both your automated helper and the direct link to Microsoft, and neither worked. At the end of the installation, it fails, and says something to the effect of an internal system failure, but does not list a cause. I did check in the SYSWOW64 folder and the original referenced file is indeed not there.
 
No. It simply says an internal system issue caused the installation to fail. It says to check the "DXErrorlog" and DirectXlog" files in the "Windows" folder... There is a DirectXlog but I'm not sure how to interpret it.
 
I've now had a look at the log file you sent and couldn't find anything untoward. Could you see if you can locate the DirectXError log file the error message mentioned? If so, I'd like to see a copy of that as well.

Shane
 
There is no such log anywhere to be found... Now this is just a thought, but I do have Trainz 10 installed on my old Vista machine, and it's running in DirectX mode. Do you think it might work to copy the aforementioned file from the Vista machine onto this one?

I will say this is a new system, and the drivers were updated 4 months ago. However, Trainz 12 does say the build is out of date. If that makes a difference.
 
The out of date build shouldn't affect it. In terms of copying individual DirectX files, this is not a good idea as they depend on other DirectX files which need to be the correct version.

I will need to do some further research, although there is one other place to look (Event Viewer). However, it's not going to be easy for me to describe how to use that tool.

Shane
 
I am somewhat familiar with the event viewer. However, I have to leave for work in a few minutes, and work a long day tomorrow as well, so if there is a long gap in responses from me, that is why. But I will gladly work with you in troubleshooting, and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for doing so.
 
Hi Shane,

This doesn't make sense to me either. He shouldn't have problems running your installer for the DX files. He needs to run this as administrator. It runs, does its thing and he should be all set from there.

John
 
Indeed. My tools are all set to run as administrator as well. I've never had any issues installing the files.

One other thought I've had though is whether the antivirus is causing problems.

Shane
 
You still need to install things such as DX9 as administrator even if you are running as an admin account. The newer operating systems consider the user, even with admin rights, to be the equivalent of a super-user in the Linux/Unix world. Try right-clicking and run as administrator on the installer and see if that works, and definitely turn off your A/V, especially the Kaspersky which is really, really tough.

John
 
Success! I disabled Kaspersky, then installed the redistributable version, and it worked right away. Thank you both gentlemen for your help!
 
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