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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
12 years ago
Solved

"Could not intialize display hadrware" Error.

I recently downloaded Dead Space as part of the "On the house" program by Origin. This is the first & only title that has failed to work on my system; and I play all sorts of power & resource hungry titles at full settings, thanks to two physical Intel Xeon processors & nVidia GTX 780 graphics card, along with 32 GB memory. All my Origin titles play flawless.

As soon as I launch, I get the following error:

"Could not initialize display hardware. Please resart Dead Space".

I have followed threads & other suggestions on Google and have tried the following few things:

- I did not have the "settings.txt" file present, so I followed instructions on another thread & created the "C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Electronic Arts\Dead Space" folder and put the provided "settings.txt" in that folder. This didn't help.

- Within "settings.txt", I've played with a few different values, for example, window.state was changed to 0, 1 & 2 ... niether of the three helped. With "0" and "2" I get "Dead Space.exe has stopped working", with "1" I get the above intialize error. I also changed vsync to both "true" and "false"; niether helped.

- I've also tried putting "-windowed" in the Game Properties under origin; it didn't help either.

- In the Compatibiliy Mode for "Dead Space.exe", I have tried without any compatibility; and also compatibilty with "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" and "Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)" amongst some of the other choices. None helped.

My DirectX Dialog Information file is available to view/download here:

http://www.luci5r.com/ASSETS/GRUBS/DxDiag.txt

Any help in getting this game up & running would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Barry,

    I figured it out. You ready for this?

    So as it turns out, you did latch on to the correct problem in your last post. Indeed, much to my dismay, but also to my relief, it appears that some games cannot tolerate 2 physical CPU's. "Dead Space" and "Dead Island Riptide" are 2 prime examples of this.

    After your last post about digging into a dual CPU setup, I spent some time today digging into it myself. I came across a process for turning Off your physical cores in Windows 8 for this exact purpose - applications or games that cannot run on multiple CPU's (or in some cases, multiple cores).

    I followed the instructions and took my system back into the stone age; into the "Core2Duo" era. I disabled all but 2 cores, giving me 4 threads. As soon as I restarted the system & went back in, both Dead Space & Dead Island Riptide fired up immideately. No issues!!

    I bumped up the cores to 4 Cores / 8 Threads ... and they're still working fine. I have two physical 8 Core processors giving me 16 threads a piece; which gives me a total of 32 threads. I haven't tested it far enough but I'm imagining if I essentially disable my 2nd processor and keep only 1 processor running (8 Cores / 16 Threads), both these games should be able to run. I believe it's the 2nd physical CPU that's causing them to crash.

    You may already know the process for turning off cores in Windows, but just in case, here's the process I used:

    Windows 8.1 64-bit

    Type "msconfig" in run or search.

    Under "System Configuration", click the "Boot" tab.

    Click "Advanced Options..."

    Check "Number of Processors:" and choose number of cores to enable in the drop-down.

    Restart.

    You can probably add this to your standard troubleshooting procedures, especially for systems with high end processors or quite a few cores.

    On a side-note, I must say I'm slightly dissapointed. I'm running everything from the original Doom, Duke Nukem 3D & Prince of persia (1995) to Splinter Cell Blacklist, StarCraft, CoH, Borderlands 2, etc ... In total I must have a library of 50 games on my PC spanning decades - from 90's to the very latest titles. I'm astonished that the developers of both these titles, EA & Deep Silver, rendered the applications such that they just won't run on multi-processor systems. If 98% of the titles I've come across run on this system - I can't imagine what was so crucial in the software of these 2 particular games that the developers could not bypass. It's a bit baffling to be honest.

    Either way, the problem is solved. Switching back & forth between enabling & disabling cores isn't all that hard & it's what I'll resort to for these 2 games.

    I must thank you for all your efforts & patience. You definitely pointed out the right possible hurdle.

    Thanks again for all your help.

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  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Barry,

    I did end up trying quite a few things. I switched out my monitor with a 1080p monitor. Lowered resolution in the settings.txt; also tried lower the monitor resolution itself. Tried various different combinations of resolution; fullscreen; window state; monitor resolution, etc.

    Absolutely nothing helped. The errors never changed.

    Yes, the motherboard supports the CPU 100%; and has the latest firmware. I actually went through extensive pre-sale support with the manufacturer before picking the motherboard. Each component had to fit in appropriately with the other; this was very important for me due to the rendering software I use (which are far more picky & cumbersome then games are). I'm using the ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16 SSI EEB Server Motherboard with the Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 X 2 CPU's. The rendering engines are extremely particular about the CPU features; so I had to spend a considerable amount of time with pre-sale support before selecting a motherboard.

    I have a vast game library on my PC and so far only 2 games have failed to launch; one is Dead Space and the other is Dead Island Riptide. However, with Dead Island Riptide (which is Steam by the way), there is an extensive launch problem which is well documented & found across the Internet. Quite a few suffer from it and there's never been a cure found. People have paid over $40 for that game and Steam support or Deep Silver has never been able to solve those issues.

    With Dead Space however, most people have been able to resolve their issues with the "settings.txt". I just don't understand where I'm stuck.

    There is one other thing I will try today - time permitting - I will download & install Origin & Dead Space on a different PC. That one isn't configured for gaming; it's my wife's PC and is much less equipped handle gaming of any sort, however, I'm curious.

    Do let me know if you have any other suggestions for me.

    Thanks.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    DOGGONE IT!

    So I installed Origin & Dead Space on my wife's PC and it worked!! Just simply worked. I didn't even create Settings.txt or touch anything. This is a very basic Intel i5-4200U / Intel HD Graphics 4400, Windows 8.1 64-bit PC.

    After running the game once, it created a Settings.txt; so I stole that file and replace my Settings.txt with the one created on my wife's PC. Still get the same errors on my PC. But works fine on hers.

    I don't get it. I'm baffled.

  • EA_Barry's avatar
    EA_Barry
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    12 years ago

    Hmmm, it seems like your setup may be a little too specialised toward the hardcore workstation side of things. I know I said previously that the game will work on Xeon processors, but with a dual CPU setup I am not so sure. Let me see if I can find more on dual CPU compatibility...

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Thanks Barry; I'm all out of ideas. Will look forward to your response.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    Barry,

    I figured it out. You ready for this?

    So as it turns out, you did latch on to the correct problem in your last post. Indeed, much to my dismay, but also to my relief, it appears that some games cannot tolerate 2 physical CPU's. "Dead Space" and "Dead Island Riptide" are 2 prime examples of this.

    After your last post about digging into a dual CPU setup, I spent some time today digging into it myself. I came across a process for turning Off your physical cores in Windows 8 for this exact purpose - applications or games that cannot run on multiple CPU's (or in some cases, multiple cores).

    I followed the instructions and took my system back into the stone age; into the "Core2Duo" era. I disabled all but 2 cores, giving me 4 threads. As soon as I restarted the system & went back in, both Dead Space & Dead Island Riptide fired up immideately. No issues!!

    I bumped up the cores to 4 Cores / 8 Threads ... and they're still working fine. I have two physical 8 Core processors giving me 16 threads a piece; which gives me a total of 32 threads. I haven't tested it far enough but I'm imagining if I essentially disable my 2nd processor and keep only 1 processor running (8 Cores / 16 Threads), both these games should be able to run. I believe it's the 2nd physical CPU that's causing them to crash.

    You may already know the process for turning off cores in Windows, but just in case, here's the process I used:

    Windows 8.1 64-bit

    Type "msconfig" in run or search.

    Under "System Configuration", click the "Boot" tab.

    Click "Advanced Options..."

    Check "Number of Processors:" and choose number of cores to enable in the drop-down.

    Restart.

    You can probably add this to your standard troubleshooting procedures, especially for systems with high end processors or quite a few cores.

    On a side-note, I must say I'm slightly dissapointed. I'm running everything from the original Doom, Duke Nukem 3D & Prince of persia (1995) to Splinter Cell Blacklist, StarCraft, CoH, Borderlands 2, etc ... In total I must have a library of 50 games on my PC spanning decades - from 90's to the very latest titles. I'm astonished that the developers of both these titles, EA & Deep Silver, rendered the applications such that they just won't run on multi-processor systems. If 98% of the titles I've come across run on this system - I can't imagine what was so crucial in the software of these 2 particular games that the developers could not bypass. It's a bit baffling to be honest.

    Either way, the problem is solved. Switching back & forth between enabling & disabling cores isn't all that hard & it's what I'll resort to for these 2 games.

    I must thank you for all your efforts & patience. You definitely pointed out the right possible hurdle.

    Thanks again for all your help.

  • EA_Barry's avatar
    EA_Barry
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    12 years ago

    Awesome, well done!

    I think your process of disabling the second CPU is the only way you are going to be able to play DS1 and as you said its not that much hassle to turn the second CPU on and off.

    I assume the extra work required to have a game function on the relatively niche segment of the market with dual physical CPUs was not deemed worth it for the number of users with this kind of setup.

    I am glad I could point you in the right direction but you did all the leg work so kudos to you.

    Happy gaming :0)

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