Managed Direct3D - DLL hell / Pre-SP2 issues

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From: MonoxideC (monoxidec_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/02/04 

Date: 2 Dec 2004 15:00:21 -0800

I'm currently working with a team on a Managed Direct3D app in c#, and
we are having strange issues that seem to be related to SP2. We have
been able to reproduce this issue on multiple machines of various
configurations, but have been unable to find any insight at all into
what the root cause of the problem may be.

The app initializes fine, but once it tries to create the Direct3D
device, it throws a NullReferenceException. We are creating the
device using this line (which is the standard method of creation that
I've seen in many examples)

device = new Device(0, DeviceType.Software, pbRender,
CreateFlags.SoftwareVertexProcessing, presentParams);

However - here's where it get's interesting. It ONLY throws the error
on machines that are PRE-WindowsXP SP2. Installing SP2 fixes the
problem. This error occurs in the samples that are included with the
DirectX SDK October 2004 update as well.

This makes no sense to me - installing the latest DirectX 9.0c runtime
available on Microsoft's website does not help - only pc's running SP2
are able to run the app or any of the sample apps in the SDK.

I have been unable to find any information on this issue, and because
of this, I have no idea on how to proceed. I'm sure that we can
expect our end users to experience the same issues that we are having,
and we definately can't 'require' a SP2 upgrade - that makes no sense.

If anyone has experienced this issue (i'm sure it has to be common
despite the lack of information) we'd appreciate any insight into the
cause and any workarounds or suggestions that you might have.

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