Getting an Error when loading a game after closing the game

[Danman77]

Hey everyone. I've been having an issue and I hope this is the right place to post this. I am getting an error sometimes, but only after playing a game and then closing it down. The only two games I've been playing are Magic Arena and Xcom 2. The first time I play a game everything is fine. But sometimes when I try to play a game later I get this error:
"Failed to initialize Direct3D.
Make sure you have at least DirectX 9.0c installed, have drivers for your
graphics card and have not disabled 3D acceleration
in display settings.
InitializeEngineGraphics failed"
I then check dxDiag and noticed that in the Display 1 and Display 2 tabs under DirectX Features it says:
DirectDraw Acceleration: Not Available
Direct3D Acceleration: Enabled
AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available

I have completely uninstalled my Graphics Driver then did a clean install, but that hasn't worked.
The only thing so far that fixes it is when I reboot my computer. Then the games run fine and dxDiag has all 3 as Enabled.
I am running Windows 10 Professional.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Any ideas? Thank you

 

[IHateSmurfs]

Hey, google for DX9 Redist package and go to MS's website and download the 90-ish MB package. Extract, use the installer included and restart your PC. That might just fix it!

 

[Danman77]

Okay, trying that now.

 

[Danman77]

Alright, we'll see if that fixes it. It happens intermittently, sometimes not for a day or two, so I'll get back to you and let you know if it happens again.
Thank you.

 

[IHateSmurfs]

Alright. If you got more questions either place 'em here or PM me! Good luck.

 

[Danman77]

Fix didn't work, I just got the error again. I was trying to load Xcom2 and I got an error saying "Xcom has encountered a problem and must close"
When I try to load Assassin's Creed Syndicate I get an error stating, "Unable to run the game. Your video card doesn't support DirectX 11 or video drivers need to be updated." Now my video drivers have been up to date, but when I open Geforce Experience it is telling me that there is a new driver ready for download. But if I try to download and install it anyway, then the updater does a hard freeze.

Another symptom that may be related also appeared. I received a Windows 10 pop-up saying "Save a Theme" "Windows can't find one of the files in this theme. Do you still want to save the theme?" with yes or no buttons underneath.

 

[Danman77]

Oh, also forgot to mention: when I can't load up a game, if I try to open the Nvidia Control Panel it crashes.

Once again, all of these problems stop on a reboot, but start again after closing down a game (sometimes).

 

[IHateSmurfs]

Ok go to safe mode, uninstall all nVidia related stuff, reinstall drivers and tell me if it works out 😀

 

[Danman77]

Ok go to safe mode, uninstall all nVidia related stuff, reinstall drivers and tell me if it works out 😀

I actually had already done that before my very first post.

I think it may have been the Nvidia driver itself, because I had completely uninstalled and then reinstalled the latest driver (at the time), but was still having the issue. A couple of days ago a new driver came out though, so I did another clean install of the newest one and I haven't had the issue return.

Fingers crossed, it was just the driver and nothing on my pc.

 

[IHateSmurfs]

Yeah fingers crossed dude. Last time that happened my 1050ti burnt. Now I got a 1070Ti and I'm happy 😀

 

[Danman77]

Just wanted to update you. Still no problems with the GPU, but the "Save a Theme" error returned, so I'm assuming they aren't linked after all.

 

[IHateSmurfs]

Backup your stuff and reinstall Windows because it might be a corrupted kernel.