More Awesome Than You!

I apologize if this has been discussed elsewhere. A search turned nothing relevant up.

I continuousy get the error D3DERR_NOTAVAILABLE and crash to desktop. This error with the game was actually happening before I completely reformatted (last week) and now continues after all my reinstalling and updating to get back working order. It has no rhyme or reason. Sometimes I can play for hours. Sometimes only 30 minutes.
Trying to track down the cause suggests over and over again it is related to graphic card drivers. My card is a Nvidia GeForce (7950GT) and I have the most recent drivers available from the Nvidia website.

On to my questions.

I am wondering if anyone here is using DirctX 10 on WindowsXP and if this might (since it is a card to directX issue) solve the issue.
Or if someone is running XP, directX 9c, a GeForce Nvidia and an older set of drivers with no problem - what driver version it would be.
Or if anyone is running DirectX10, XP, Nvidia GeForce and getting this error - or older drivers, DirectX9c, XP, and also getting this error.

*edit to correct actual card name

Honestly, I ran the game on a backup 7900 about a year ago, using the newest drivers available at the time and noticed nothing wrong. The D3D "no directx surfaces" error can occur at any time with any card, though, if you do things, like, say, ALT-CRTL-DEL or ALT-TAB while the game is loading up. Presumably there's some kind of race condition involved. Does this occur if you run the game in Windowed mode?

DX10 does not exist on XP, does it? I thought that was a Vista-only thing, and as such, is unpopular because No One Likes Vista. Did they hack it to work on XP?

Meh you are correct about DX10 being only for Vista. I didn't look full into it before thinking it might be an option.


I don't run the game in windowed mode very often. I did recently and did not notice the error - I can't put that off as a solution, though, because of the no rhyme or reason. There's not any specific amount of time it decides to happen. Nor is there a specific incident in game that causes it. I thought at first it had to do with spinning the camera at a bad time, overloading the card by forcing it to render to much but then it started happening when the camera wasn't moving at all.

The error has also occurred with no alt-tabbing whatsoever.



ETU: Been playing in windowed mode all day and haven't had a single crash. Seems to be a definate work-around, I just need to suck up the lack of edge scrolling.
Of course now that I say that... :D

This has happened to me, as well. I do not run it in windowed mode, nor do I alt-tab/ctrl-alt-delete while loading or anything like that. My Direct-X is up-to-date, and so are all my video card drivers. Yesterday it ran perfectly for about 4 hours, and after that, it began to give a similar error, saying that my computer doesn't have the latest Direct-X and couldn't run. Now the game won't even start up at all in full screen, or in windowed mode.  :'(

Any suggestions, anyone?

Playing in windowed mode has (so far) solved the crashing for me.

Have you tried loading the game fresh 'n clean style (rename your current TS2 game in My Documents)?
Playing with a no-cd crack? Removed SecuROM?

If it's not loading at all, my first inclination is to think the game files have been corrupted from the crashes and might require a reinstall. Perhaps it's not gone that far yet, though.

Thanks, myskaal, I'll try that later today (renaming/reinstalling). I have all EPs/SPs, and I'm not using a no cd crack or anything *coughwouldabeencheapercough*  ;D

You might want to read this thread:  How to get rid of SecuROM, NOW (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9929.0.html)

The idea of a no cd crack isn't to get a game for free. It's to have a game that you paid for function properly because EA sucks. Can pretty well promise you you've been infected with secuROM. It's really in your computer's best interest to get rid of it and it might solve the problem (if it's not corrupted files from the crashing).