direct3D acceleration is not available in Windows 7

Anonymous
2011-04-17T10:21:18+00:00

Dear all,

I've just installed a game in Windows 7. However, after installing, i couldn't start the game. An error came up like this:

"Could not find any compatible Direct3D devices. Please make sure that the correct graphics driver is installed on your system, and Direct3D acceleration is enabled".

I did come to the DirectX Diagnostic Tool to check. In System tab, i found that DirectX version is DirectX 11. In Display tab, all three DirectX features "DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGP Texture acceleration" are all not available. And i couldn't find the "Enable" button to activate. It's not like Windows XP that you can find "Enable" and "Disable" buttons. It appeared nothing here but "Not available" line.

I've already installed DirectX 11 SDK and DirectX 11 End User Runtimes. I also try to update graphics driver (however, windows 7 announced that the current driver is up to date).

I'm using Laptop Compaq Presario CQ42 262TU; Intel® Core™ i3-370M (2*2.40GHz, 4Threads);Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator HD 500.

PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS SITUATION!!!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Gaming

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2011-08-05T15:36:29+00:00

I spent over 5 hours on this one and finaly figured it out. 

Use REGEDIT and change the "SoftwareOnly" key from "1" to "0" in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers

and then reboot the system and it should work.

The problem was the DXDIAG under 64bit worked fine but it was disabled for 32bit programs.

Monster Fastener

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-15T18:22:14+00:00

    Hello, I have the exact same issue as freakyman's. I tried MonsterFastener's method but it did not work for me. 

    For your information, my Direct3D drivers is not located under Wow6432Node, instead my path in the registry is : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers. 

    Under "Drivers" folder, I have no key named "SoftwareOnly". I don't know how may I enable my DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGP Texture acceleration features in this case.

    Can anyone help me with this?  Thank you very much!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-01-22T17:07:34+00:00

    Well - I had " Software Only" key in this location: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers". And turning it into 0 helped me to solve the issue. I had "Direct3D Acceleration: Not Available" stated by dxdiag on my ATI Radeon X1900 XTX card n my 32-bit Windows 7 machine.

    Everything works fine again for me.

    Thank you Monster Fastner for suggestion!

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-02-09T14:16:04+00:00

    I had similar issue but I had to change value to EmulationOnly=0 under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw on Win 7 machine.

    Everything works fine now.

    Thanks.

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