Known video-related issues with Halo: Combat Evolved
A problem occurred initializing Direct3D. Hardware acceleration maybe disabled, please run DXDIAG. Halo could not correctly initialize the 3D part of DirectX (Direct3D) to display the game. DirectX may be corrupted or video Hardware Acceleration may have to be increased. For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
DirectX (Home User) (
DirectX (Home User))
Microsoft recommendation: This can occur if you are running a utility that forces your video solution to use a particular update rate when you run DirectX games. Examples of utilities like this would include, but are not limited to, PowerStrip, ReForce, NVTweak, NVHardPage, RivaTuner, and Refresh Force. Try to disable these utilities. For more information about how to disable these utilities see the page where you downloaded them. You may also be able to override these utilities by setting a customer update rate for Halo by using the -vidmode command line parameter.
For additional information about command line parameters, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
830487 (
Halo: Combat Evolved: Target line parameters and troubleshooting shortcuts) Halo: Combat Evolved: Target line parameters and troubleshooting shortcuts
If you are using Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and your video card has more than 256 megabytes (MB), download and install the latest Halo update. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/games/halo/support.asp (
http://www.microsoft.com/games/halo/support.asp)
For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
886301 (
Halo: Combat Evolved: The game unexpectedly quits before the intro movie or you receive the “A problem occurred initializing Direct3D†error message)
Halo: Combat Evolved: Compatibility fix for Windows XP S and 256 MB video cards
If the issue continues to occur after you try the methods that are listed in the "Microsoft's recommendations" section, follow the instructions that are listed in the following Knowledge Base article.
For more information about DirectX Corruption, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
191660 (
The DirectDraw option or the Direct3D option is unavailable when you start Microsoft games for Windows) Games: The DirectDraw option or the Direct3D option is unavailable when you start games for Windows
Hope this helps
