Unofficial Aptiva Technical Support Knowledge Base   Aptiva TechDoc #10017
Last updated 11/09/99





DirectDraw Error

"Your Display Driver is Not Windows 95 Compatible..."



Problem

Error message:

"Your display driver is not Windows 95 compatible.
DirectDraw only supports Windows95 compatible drivers"



Occurs

Attempting to load games or software that use DirectX/DirectDraw (including but not limited to Activision's MechWarrior 2)


Effects

This issue as discussed here here primarily effects Aptiva systems with the ATI 3D Rage (aka Mach64) chipsets


Cause

When appropriate Win95 drivers verified as supporting DirectX are installed these errors may be caused by a conflict with the with a driver used in "Online Housecall" and DirectDraw


Solution

(A) Check to see if CSLDR.386 is loading
  1. Click Start > Click Run > Type SYSEDIT > Click OK
  2. Choose the file SYSTEM.INI
  3. About 25-30 lines down you will see this:
    [386enh]
  4. Look for one of the following lines:

    DEVICE=C:\CSW6B6\CSLDR.386
    or
    DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSLDR.386

    If this line is present you want to disable it to prevent the problematic CSLDR.386 file from loading into memory
    each time the PC is started. My personal suggestion would
    be to disable all three CoSessions drivers. To do so:

  5. Place a semicolon [;] at the beginning of each line so they appear as:

    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW6B6\CSLDR.386
    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW6B6\CSDVXD.386
    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW6B6\CSSAFE95.386

    or
    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSLDR.386
    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSDVXD.386
    ;DEVICE=C:\CSW70\CSSAFE95.386


  6. Click File > Click Save
  7. Restart your computer and try to play your game
(B) Verify that you are using ATI-specific display drivers
  1. Right-Click on your Desktop > Click Properties
  2. Choose the Settings tab
  3. If you are using Win95 OSR1:
    Click the "Change Display Type" button
    If you are using Win95 OSR2 or Win98:
    Click the Advanced button > Choose the Adapter tab
  4. Confirm that the graphics adapter is shown as an ATI device
If your graphics adapter is identified as a "Standard Display Adapter [VGA]" or any other non-ATI specific "generic" device look to either switch to an existing ATI driver already on your hard drive or to download an updated driver from IBM or ATI.

(C) Update your ATI display drivers

If all else fails my suggestion is to install newer drivers. The latest IBM-supplied ATI drivers for the Rage I and Rage II chipsets are
found in the file ATI435US, but even newer drivers are available directly from ATI

More Info

The CSLDR.386 driver which is known to cause conflicts with DirectDraw is commonly not loaded into memory at startup, however any attempt to launch the CoSessions (aka "Online Housecall") client will add the line loading it into SYSTEM.INI. This problem is often caused by curious users quite naturally "poking around" and exploring their systems.

Although touted as the best thing since sliced bread and a big selling point with circa-1999/97 Aptivas to the best of my knowledge "Online HouseCalls" have never existed in the *real world* outside of IBM promotional materials such as product brochures and multimedia demos (if anyone out there has ever HAD a "housecall" I'd LOVE to hear about it), therefore disabling the drivers mentioned and even deleting the CSW* folder to reclaim the wasted disk space should have absolutely no impact on anyone's use of their Aptiva.




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