Failed to start rendering system

[Skorj1]

Trying to get DDO working on a Windows 8.1 laptop. Working fine for me right now on a different Win7 machine.

TurbineLauncher.exe (what the shortcut runs) works fine - put in my username and password, patch, select server - everything good up to that point. But when I click "Play", no game client. The tail of the dndclient.log is:

000000000.000: Initializing display with title 'Dungeons and Dragons Online'...
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::Init: called.
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::InitDEVICE|  Detected operating system: Windows 7
000000000.000: Failed to start rendering system.
000000000.000: Device_WIN32::Cleanup: called.

So it looks like dndclient.exe is running, then giving up. Things I've tried include putting the exes to run as Admin, and putting them in Win7 compatibility mode.

Anyone already figured this out?

[Ellihor]

I have the same issue. Log in, choose server, and it opens dndclient.exe, but the screen stays black and nothing happens. Windows 8.1 laptop

Edit: downloaded a package that the launcher was trying to install every time I ran it, but it didn't work. It was a micrsoft package, I don't remember what exactly, but I downloaded it directly from the microsoft site, and then installed, and now it works.

[sebastianosmith]

Sometimes this can be fixed by deleting or renaming the UserPreferences.ini in your Documents/DDO folder. There's a graphics setting that's messed up and it's barfing. The game will recreate the ini file with default settings.

There are other times this can be fixed by copying the contents of the "[install_location:]Turbine\Dungeons & Dragons Online\backup" folder to "[install_location:]Turbine\Dungeons & Dragons Online" (essentially copy the files one directory up the chain) and letting the game reapply the last patch on start.

Then there are those times when you have to install the DX9 Runtime on Windows 8.x to get it to work.

And as a last resort: Uninstall the whole thing. Delete EVERYTHING related to DDO; Game install folder, Documents/DDO folder and [root_drive]:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Turbine (hidden directory); Then follow Stoner81's custom installation directions.

Hope one of these fixes your issue.