OK I just bought Call of Duty 2, and when I try to play the game it says

DirectX Error DirectX has encountered an unrecoverable error. Please check DirectX Help document for possible details.

What do I do? I have a Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family ... HELP!!

(Originally posted June 2006)

Josh , , Australia

The honest answer, Josh, is that if you wish to play recent and graphically intense games you should add a decent dedicated graphics card to your system, rather than trying to play them on integrated Intel graphics. Although Intel has self advertised its integrated chipset graphics solutions as “Extreme graphics” they're really anything but that. The chipsets lack the graphics processing power necessary to do justice to more recent and demanding game titles, and are not up to the task of handling the lighting effects which are an integral part of gameplay in Call of Duty 2 on the PC.

In any case, the specific game you’ve mentioned isn't playable on Intel integrated graphics at all, as Intel has acknowledged here.

If your PC is a desktop system with a graphics card expansion slot on the motherboard you should seriously consider adding an nVidia 6600GT card or better, and using that rather than the integrated Intel graphics. The performance improvement would be dramatic for ALL your gaming! If it's a laptop with no provision to add an alternative graphics card then perhaps you should resign yourself to playing less demanding games.

By the way. You should ensure that the version of DirectX installed on your system is the most recent 9.0c version. The full 33M installation package can be downloaded from Microsoft and downloading it will give you more flexibility for reinstalling and correcting problems than the usual Internet installation.

Cheers,

Terry O'Shanassy