I updated my ATI drivers a week or so ago to Cat 3.8 after seeing rave reviews, and I thought they were great too at first. This morning though, I tried out one of the ATI techdemos (9800 Chimp v1.1) and it opened a notepad document with this: //===================================================== // ATI Sushi Error Log Created 10/19/2003 9:35 am //===================================================== [AwFn.cpp] (line 781): D3DAw Error: AwInitWindow - Unable to create a D3D device [Main.cpp] (line 557): AwInitWindow returned FALSE! Unable to create window! Quitting! -------------------- Sure enough, the other demos gave me the same exact error. Restarting didn't resolve the issue. Figuring the Cat 3.8's were to blame, I reverted back to Cat 3.7, and as I expected, everything worked again. The strange thing is, after going back to 3.8 (which i'm using now, and I probably will use even if I can't solve this problem), one of the demos worked again once, but won't work again. Every other 3D app or game works fine, it's just these demos. I don't know why I'm so obsessed over something that's just for kicks, but little things like this usually drive me crazy! Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there a control panel setting that I'm missing? Please help! btw - I'm using a Radeon 9700 PRO

Well I am using Cat 3.8 drivers with my Radeon 9600 Pro and I can run the 9800 Pro and 9700 Pro tech demos very smoothly with no problems Try uninstalling the drivers completely and reinstall them see if it helps Sorry I can't help much :( Zero Cool

Yeah, I tried that, and it worked once, then wouldn't work again. I didn't think many people had this problem, since when I searched on Google, I came up with basically nil. I'll do some more experimenting later on and I'll report back if I find the problem. I just have to think: what would cause it not to be able to initialize direct3d in this one app? -thanks anyway

I solved it! I think ;) It turns out that the new 3D profiles feature was causing some difficulties. It isn't any particular setting that causes the demos not to work, but every now and then when I change profiles the demos will stop working. If I hit "Defaults" under the "3D" tab, demo functionality is restored. It's strange though, one of my profiles uses the default settings exactly, yet switching to that profile didn't fix the problem. The problem seems to be quite erratic, and I still don't fully understand why only the demos wouldn't work nor why nobody else experiences this. Oh well, at least I found the fix!