Elemental unable to detect DirectX version

First thing to try with this is to run the directX updater. It normally solves all these issues.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en

Thanks for the tip, but when I run this it only says that I already have the latest version of directx installed. I'm still unable to run the game and I get the same error message as before.

OK second most likely thing is your graphics card driver. Is it the latest version?

Yeah, I updated them right after I got the error message from the game. Then I rebooted and tried starting it again, to no avail.

I had this happen in Generals when I had a video mode selected that my graphics drivers disagreed with.  See if you can find the config file and delete it (should be in Docs/My Games/Elemental)

Thanks for the tip. I deleted the config file and tried running the game again, but that didn't fly either. I just got the same error message. I found the debug.err file in that directory too, and it says the following:

DebugMessage:  Version 1.10.052 last updated on: 12-24-2010 11:06
DebugMessage:  Entering WinMain
DebugMessage:  ******* Starting Game Shell *******
DebugMessage:  DirectX version: 9.0
DebugMessage:  exiting.

Which is nuts! I know I have the latest version of DirectX installed! o_0 I can run other DirectX 9 -and- 10 games without a problem...

Seeing as the holidays have passed, maybe someone from Stardock is present to explain why Elemental doesn't think I have the right DirectX version installed? While Mass Effect 2, The Witcher, Alpha Protocol and Galactic Civilizations II is a small selection of my other games which works without a hitch.

Where's the difference? That's all I want to know...

Please post a dxdiag report. You can do so by:

Click Start->Run-> type in dxdiag and click OK.

Once it finishes, click the Save All button, give it a name, then open that file up in Notepad, copy+paste everything to pastebin.com or similar, and post the link here (please do not paste the report directly here as very long texts like that can make the page difficult to read).

Hello and thanks for the reply, Kryo.

A weird thing happens when I try to run dxdiag.exe. I get the message "Error: Could not load DXDIAGN.DLL". I go to the system32 folder, and both dxdiag.exe and dxdiagn.dll are there right next to each other.

And reinstalling directx doesn't seem to update these files. In fact, the last date they were modified according to the file info is 2009-09-25...

Thoughts, ideas?

legit version of windows? I had a friend who had similar issues with another game, course the idiot was running a pirate version of windows..... and he lives in seattle (meaning he can get ultimate, legitly for 40 bucks).....

Well, yeah. I have a legit version of windows. Unless Acer have started shipping their Aspire's with pirated copies. This is a storebought, brand computer. Came with the OS installed when I bought it.

That's probably the cause of the problem then. Go ahead and email [email protected] about this, they may be able to help figure it out.

Thanks, I will do that.