The Orange Box

I just bought the orange box, and i was wondering. Does anyone know how to get the damn thing to work.

Ive installed it on my pc, and everytime i try to play it, it says, failed to create d3d.
It is getting really annoying, and i know alot of people have had this problem. For some reason orange box doesnt like the ATI Radeon x1300 (among other models), which i have.
Now ive tried everything i could find on the internet. I updated with what i think was the right update, i changed it to windowed, i changed it to -dxblaba 81 (cant remember what it was right now).
Help would be great if anyone has any knowlege of this.

I really want to start playing!

Try making sure your drivers are up to date, I downloaded DirectX again, reinstalled it, and and made sure directx3d was enabled, then it ran OK.

Does anyone else think it's hillariously ironic that the only people who seem to NOT CARE about their users or archaic hardware, are those developers who are selling games by the truck load?

As to your problem I've had the same issue with some (mostly Unreal 3) based games on my ATi x1650. As for a fix, I can't be much help there as there doesn't seem to be any immediate pattern, except pure dumb luck as to when it'll work, and when it wouldn't.

PC games suck. Buy a console. :)

Isn't the Orange Box a compilation of stuff? Do any of them work?

Valve cleary says that you need to install the latest drivers for your hardware and that you should also make sure that your DirectX version is up to date.

Most of the bleeding edge 3D FPS games do NOT support notebook chipsets, by the way. The Unreal 3 engine, for example, only runs at 640x480 (or was it even less?) with NO details at all on my X1600. So it could be that you are SOL (Shit Out of Luck.)

However, all Orange Box games run great on my X1600. Even on Vista, I can run them at the maximum resolution of my screen, 1680x1050.

But listen to the advice: Buy a console. If you're into games like HL2, buy an Xbox 360. The Orange Box looks gorgeous at 1920x1200 on an Xbox. ;-)

But then your paying way too much for it...

Anyhoo, run the DXDiag program, and make sure 2D and 3D is active and can run all the tests. Also, make sure that, if your running something like RealVNC or UltaVNC, the remote access display driver is disabled as that deactivates the 3D part of DirectX.

Aside from that, it looks like your hardware may not be compatible.

I have a 360 already, even orange box for that. My friend told me, who also has both, that it is much better on the pc. TF2 is much better, plus you can put the portal gun into hl2, which reall seems fun.
It is fun for the console, but TF2 has much more online, plus a lot larger player count.

Ill try to update directX though, i already updated my graphics drivers.

MY friend has the same graphics card, and i think less ram than i, and his works fine, so i really dont see why mine isnt working

It really should run well on every average hardware.

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I dislike TF2. Ut3 and CoD4 are much better.
Portal is so short, it could be called a shareware game.
Well, Episode I, already own that.

So why bother with this orange package for 49.99?

Winni: Orange Box runs at about 30fps on Xbox at 1080i (and I assume 1080p as well). That's 1920x1080, not 1920x1200.

Orange Box runs at 60fps on my laptop at 1920x1200, except for Portal (dips to 20fps in some cases) and HL:Ep2 (dips to 30 occasionally).

There are more powerful PC rigs out there than my laptop, by a long way.

At least the Xbox version is better than the PS3 version, where it runs at 1280x720 and suffers worse framerate.

I REally like the class system, which is really top notch in TF2, and portals is great. That was another reason i wanted the pc version, in the pc version you can put your portal gun into HL2, which would be really fun.

So many times when i was playing HL2 for the 360, i though, "Man, i wish i had the portal gun right about now."
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These are my specs if that would help anyone.

Windows XP Home edition
Pavilion
AMD Athalon XP 3000+
2.10 GHz 1.00 GB of Ram

Radeon X1300 graphics card
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Cripes, what is your laptop sporting (and how hasn't it melted-down yet)? My MB Pro's 8600m GT can only handle 40fps @ 1440x900 with everything cranked.

Anyways, have you tried using the even-lower direct X option? Last I recall Source supports DX9/8/7, if it doesn't work at 7 there's really something wrong with either the drivers, or your setup.