Losing DirectX Device -- Plz Help :(

[Vandiver]

Good morning all -- I've been having a lot of trouble lately with the "Losing directX device error". I can only play for about 5 mins at a time before it shuts down. I usually play in full-screen mode (not a big fan of windowed)...but the error has be reoccuring constantly especially over the past couple of days. I can't figure it out...before I would only get it occasionally (maybe once a week)...now it's every 5 mins. Any ideas? Here are my stats:

Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8100 Eight-Core Processor
Memory (RAM): 10.0 GB
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6670
Gaming graphics: 5775 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk: 856GB Free (919GB Total)

[GinTama]

normally the error appears if you try to use alt+tab ... maybe some data got corrupted. or something wrong with the version of windows you are using right now

[prymortal]

It could be many things but most commonly its the motherboard in these cases (from experiances of computers i've fixed due to this), next is the graphics card, 3rd is the windows system/Drivers.
Easist way to guess what it is would be to use your motherboard in-built graphics card if it has one (if you get the error its the mother board)
if not try using a friends graphics card, (if you still get the error its the motherboard, if you dont its the graphics card)
Last option is a background app pulling from fullscreen but this is highly unlikely, i can give you step by step instructions on how to fullscreen ALT-Tab if you do believe this to be the case (find me on loadstone & post on any of my blogs posts)

These are assuming you have done a full uninstall of your graphics drivers & reset your computer then reinstalled them: http://www.overclock.net/t/988215/ho...graphics-cards
& that you have done a ramtest: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...tics-tool.html to make sure its not ram related.

*Edit* oh i made a mistake 1st is graphics cards, second is windows system/Drivers, 3rd is motherboards Unless you get BSOD as well then its motherboards/grasphic cards/ windows, apps, drivers..

[Enfarious]

I'd look into bg apps attempting to go fullscreen before I started ripping out hardware, check the rig in my stats, it's not far off from yours so assuming none of your hardware has shit the bed it should be fine.

One of the most commonly missed DX fullscreening issues are screensavers, if you play w/ a gamepad the input from it doesn't count toward non-idling so your screen saver can/will still try to kick on killing your fullscreen. I don't know wether or not this game works like XI controls-wise but I know that XI hooked the input controls so that mouse/kbd messages never made it to windows, so that even though you were mashing keys your SS would still kick in.

So basically > Other apps that are running > screen saver settings > hardware check.

Since SE doesn't want to get onboard with dropping and reacquiring screen device contexts like every other game on the market those of us who'd rather play in FS but still want to be able to alt+tab from time to time during longish sessions get the shaft. Even more so we lose out on Crossfire/SLI or get stuck in FS and have to exit game to check e-mail.

In it's present state I get the same(and sometimes better) frame rates in windowed mode on my rig. Again yours isn't that different it might be worth looking into, use a pseudo mode app to make it FSish, here's the one I use, it doesn't break ToS all it does is stretch and reposition the window, it doesn't interact w/ the game at all.
Shift Window

[Xisin]

My wife is having the same problem, except with a Galaxy Technology 1 GB DDR3 GeForce GT240 Graphics Card 24GGS8HX2PUX.

We've tried several different things and are at a loss at what to do about this. Her game just keeps bringing up a black screen and a directx crash, it follows this up by saying the kernal drivers have recovered.

[Enfarious]

That sounds very driver related Xisin.

Always worth trying: Find newest stable release driver from gpu company, not the card manufacturer. Uninstall > Restart > Install Clean Driver > Restart > See if it's all better.
Reseating your card, ram and/or cpu, as well as other components as was mentioned earlier by Prymortal would be worth trying, even (where possible) seating them in different slots as on occasion a slot will be bad and only exhibit symptoms under certain conditions, like higher than avg. power draw.

Also the hardware support in this title has been shoddy from day 1, they admitted it even back in beta "the ball was dropped" it was sadly not at the top of the "to fix" list.

As a small aside, wandering aimlessly through various hardware forums looking for a functional Crossfire patch/hack for running in windowed mode, and some other overlay option than steam. Here's another thing to look @Radeon Pro it's a decent tool, and it had a HUGE impact on my framerates. Catch: it was a nightmare to get to work 100% right (I did not follow instructions, I mucked w/ settings ALOT) but when it was, aside from being trapped in FS again my framerates went from 45~55 to locked @60 even in cities.

In conclusion, if you've got the cpu/ram to manage windowed mode @ a decent frame rate, use it, with shift-window it's actually better.

Edit: Another Thought: One other thing for the AMD crowd get the latest C.A.P. if you haven't already. Granted it's a crossfire thing, but keeping it up to date might not hurt.