Front Buffer error

[gaz999]

Lately I have found a few of the more recent pinball tables have given me . . .
"Could Not Create Front Buffer" followed by Error 887600e1.
Does anyone know what Might be giving me this problem?
I am using a new computer so guess there's some setting or other that is causing it.
Cheers
Gaz999

[Phoenixx]

It might be a problem with the graphic card and/or DirectX but its hard to tell without knowing more details.

Operation System?

Graphic Card Model? (Card or OnBoard?)

Driver Version?

DirectX Version?

Visual Pinball Version?

Are there any other error messages?

You know, that sort of stuff,...

[gaz999]

Originally Posted by Phoenixx

It might be a problem with the graphic card and/or DirectX but its hard to tell without knowing more details.

Operation System?

Graphic Card Model? (Card or OnBoard?)

Driver Version?

DirectX Version?

Visual Pinball Version?

Are there any other error messages?

You know, that sort of stuff,...

Thanks for your interest Phoenix. I think you must be right 'cos the games work fine on my old PC.

My new set up is as follows :-

Operation System - Vista Home Premium
Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
Graphics Driver Version - NVIDIA 7.15.11.8250 (27/03/09)
DirectX 10
Visual Pinball - I've tried both v8.9506 and V9.0.2

Other stuff:-
Quad CPU Q9550
Asus Rampage Formula Motherboard

The problem only occurs on some recent tables - e.g. Twister, TOTAN, TFTC, MM & KISS

Other recent tables such as LOTR, Taxi and AFM work fine.

Thanks again for your interest
Cheers
Graham

[yogiholzer]

I already read this yesterday and I came to similar conclusion as Phoenixx. I even googled for "Could Not Create Front Buffer" and for "Error 887600e1", but didn't find a solution.

Is there any possibility to get a recent or previous DirectX version for Vista? Is DirectX 10 an official MS release?

[gaz999]

Originally Posted by yogiholzer

I already read this yesterday and I came to similar conclusion as Phoenixx. I even googled for "Could Not Create Front Buffer" and for "Error 887600e1", but didn't find a solution.

Is there any possibility to get a recent or previous DirectX version for Vista? Is DirectX 10 an official MS release?

The version of DirectX 10 was pre-installed together with Vista when I bought the PC.
- Gaz

[Phoenixx]

O.K., your system seems fine, nothing out of the ordinary.

When i saw that you have a GTX280 i suspected that it might be related to that. This, however, i could exclude in the meantime because i have bought a GTX260 yesterday. This is technically the exact same card only with 2 of the 10 shader clusters disabled, (hence fewer ROPs, TMUs, etc.), and VP seems to run on it without any problems. Ergo its not a problem with the G200 architecture per se or i would have gotten the same error.

This pretty much leaves the driver then, and perhaps DirectX. Hence the first thing you should try now is to install the latest driver from nVidias website. Maybe that will already do the trick. The currently latest WHQL version is 185.85, (dated May/6/2009), which is two months newer than yours. However, you could also try 186.08, which is still labeled as beta but recommendable nevertheless since it a) works great, and b) also fixed a couple of nasty stability issues in some games. The decision is of course up to you. In any case you should try VP with all driver settings on standard/default first, and you should also set VP to run in one of the standard 4:3 screen resolutions (like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, 1600x1200, 2048x1536, etc.) as 'odd' screen resolutions can in deed sometimes trigger such buffer errors. (Although this would probably affect all tables then, but then you never know.)

Just try it out and let us know whether it helped. This is a very rare error, so it would be good to know a solution should it ever come up again.


P.S.: One other thing: Are you on Vista32 or Vista64? And you said 'recent tables'. Could you please point out the exact versions (author, release number, etc.) so i can be sure that i didnt try the wrong ones?

[gaz999]

Phoenixx,
Strange things can happen!!!
I downloaded the 'offending' tables again to try them in a different resolution etc as you suggested.
They were the latest versions added in the last couple of weeks to the download section :- Twister, TOTAN, TFTC, MM and Kiss.
(They are all VP9 except Twister).
I loaded Twister using VP8 and tried it and what do you think . . . it worked fine.
Then I loaded the other tables into VP9 and they worked fine as well!!

Incidentally, I haven't changed the resolution and used 1600x1200 - just the same as when I had the error before.
I haven't got round to upgrading my DirectX 10 driver either.

I really don't know what to suggest. Just about the only update I've done since having the problem is to go to Internet Explorer 8 but I can't see what that has to do with it at all.

Sorry for what appears to be a spurious fault.
I'll come back to you if it re-occurs.

By the way it's Vista 32
Thanks
Gaz

[Phoenixx]

Well maybe it was just one of these odd things that cure themselves after a reboot.

In any case, glad to hear its working now. If you run into any other problems, just holler,...

[Killik]

help I also have the same problem no longer can do can someone help? him estaria grateful my grafica is a ati 4770 thank you very much

[gaz999]

Originally Posted by Killik

help I also have the same problem no longer can do can someone help? him estaria grateful my grafica is a ati 4770 thank you very much

Sorry to hear about that Killik.
I have had the problem a few times since but it goes away when I reboot so I don't know the cause.
- Gaz

[Killik]

Solved! Go to the Finder and launch it and put dxdiag in the display tab, enable the 3 options and work.

[gaz999]

Originally Posted by Killik

Solved! Go to the Finder and launch it and put dxdiag in the display tab, enable the 3 options and work.

Do you mean the three acceleration items?

[sleepy]

Yep, the program won't run with Direct3D disabled.