Member Avatar for DougB

Hi, I just upgraded video cards from a nvidia geforce3 ti 200 to a sapphire radeon 9600xt. All of my old games run much nicer but Max Payne 2 won't run at all. It used to run fine on my old card but now all I get is a message saying that Max Payne 2 requires a direct x 9 compatable display adapter and it won't even start. The radeon is made to optimize direct x 9 so I don't understand why this is occurring? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. :confused:

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Good find by — the Windows‑98 compatibility trick proves the game can run, but it also shows something in the DirectX/driver detection chain is failing under normal XP settings. and were on the right track about driver remnants; ’s report shows the 9600XT can work normally, so this looks like a local configuration problem rather than a universal hardware bug.

Quick, focused checklist to fix it without reinstalling Windows:

  • Run dxdiag (Start → Run → dxdiag). On the Display tab confirm the device name is your Radeon 9600XT and that DirectDraw/Direct3D acceleration are listed as Enabled. Use “Save All Information” to get a text dump you can review or keep for troubleshooting.
  • Do a truly clean driver removal: make a system restore point, boot to Safe Mode, remove any ATI/NVIDIA display packages from Add/Remove Programs, then remove leftover display drivers and registry traces with a dedicated driver-clean tool (run in Safe Mode). After a clean removal reboot and install the Radeon driver package for the 9600XT.
  • Repair the DirectX runtime used by the game (the redistributable/repair option), and make sure the game has its official patch applied. These steps restore the Direct3D runtime files and the game’s adapter-detection behavior.

Extra checks: confirm the Windows hardware-acceleration slider is at full (Display → Settings → Advanced → Troubleshoot on XP), and try showing hidden devices in Device Manager to uninstall ghosted GPU entries. Keep the Windows‑98 compatibility setting as a temporary fallback while you work through the fixes, but treat it as a symptom—not the final solution. If problems persist after the clean-driver + DirectX repair, try the card in another machine (or a different card in this machine) to isolate whether the issue is OS/driver vs. hardware.

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Member Avatar for Coconut Monkey

Do you have the latest drivers for your card (www.ati.com) and Directx 9.0c (www.microsoft.com/directx) installed? Make sure you remove the previous drivers from Add/Remove Programs before installing the new ones.

Member Avatar for DougB

Thanks for replying. ATI drivers(6.14.10.6414) and Direct X (9.0c) are up to date. I did install my ATI drivers first before uninstalling the NVidia drivers which may have been a mistake. Would uninstalling and then reinstalling the ATI drivers help? :o

Member Avatar for Coconut Monkey

It could help. All kinds of grief can occur if you don't uninstall old drivers, especially if the previous video card chipset was made by a competitor!

It's a good idea to start afresh (format or a clean install of Windows) when installing a new video card, if you want trouble-free operation.

Member Avatar for DougB

Coconut Monkey,
Thank for the suggestions. They were all sound advice. The problem however turned out to be an incompatability issue with Windows XP. I changed the XP compatability to emulate W98 and the game runs like a charm. I'm not sure why this wasn't an issue with the NVidia card unless the game was optimized for NVidia. I've been told that HL2 is optimized for ATI. I guess I'll find out at Christmas. Thanks again.

Member Avatar for rcrevolution

hmm odd I run Max Payne 2 with a 9600XT no problem and i didnt have to change my XP to make it look like 98.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

DougB, you should not have to set program compatibility to get that game running. The fact that you've had to indicates underlying problems, most likely resulting from adding an ATi card without first eliminating all traces of NVidia drivers. I'd also suggest you format and start over fresh and clean, to avoid future problems ;)

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