Managed DirectX - C# - VS2010 - RunTime error on machines without DirectX. Can I catch this?

Chris Voce

Hi,
Subject says it all really.
I am using DirectX to read a game port (simply to capture the "buttons"). If there is no game port, or no DirectX, then I want to continue running the app anyway, and just never get any button closures.
I have added a reference in VS2010 to the DLL at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\DirectX for Managed Code\1.0.2902.0\Microsoft.DirectX.DirectInput.dll on my machine and am reading the Game port perfectly well on my machine (with the June 2010 SDK installed). It also works perfectly well on another machine, if it has DirectX installed.
My issue is a machine that hasn't got the correct DirectX drivers installed. I don't care - 90% of the users of the app don't need the button closures anyway and the app doesn't use DirectX for anything else.
So I am looking for a way to catch the exception, etc. But I don't think the app ever gets far enough for me to catch anything - it is a .Net Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting message that ends up in the event log, and it contains nothing of any help to me:
"Faulting application vclock.exe, version 1.1.1.0, stamp 4d137667, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.0.2195.7135, stamp 46236f98, debug? 0, fault address 0x0002bcb1."
All help gratefully appreciated. Let me know if I have missed any key facts. I am developing in 64bit Windows 7, though the app runs perfectly well on 32 bit XP machines, so long as they have DirectX up to date.
Kind regards,
Chris

6 Replies

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Chris Voce15y ago
Ah but. My laptop has DirectX installed, so doesn't exhibit the issue. VS isn't installed on the machine(s) I can repeat it on, and I can't really install it - and anyway, VS itself would complain if the DirectX SDK wasn't installed, and part of installing that would install DirectX, then I wouldn't have the issue any more :-)
I think that's the definition of Catch 22!
Chris
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Sam Hobbs15y ago
That should work, but there is a more convenient solution. You can put a breakpoint there instead and debug the program. If you are not familiar with breakpoints and debugging then find some tutorials about that. The reason breakpoints are more effective is because you use them without changing the source code and re-building.
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Chris Voce15y ago
Fair point. I did actually try putting a MessageBox there though, with the same result. I assume it is valid to have a MessageBox.Show() there?
Chris
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Sam Hobbs15y ago
The Form's Load event is not the beginning of the Form; the constructor is. The form construction is not the beginning of the program; the code in the Main function (in the Program.cs file) that precedes the line that has something such as the following is:
Application.Run(new Form1());
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Chris Voce15y ago
Hi,
Thanks for that. The problem I have is that I can't write ANY code, because it never gets as far as running it. If I make the first line of the form_load show a messagebox, I never see the messagebox. So I guess the failure is at a lower level within DotNet, and I don't have the first clue of how to catch that.
Chris
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Sam Hobbs15y ago
I don't know, but if you don't mind some suggestions then that might help. I think the best thing to do is to look for articles that show how to determine the version of DirectX and samples of doing that. The articles and samples probably show how to test to determine if DirectX is installed and is a specified version. The code will probably start by calling LoadLibrary to determine if a DirectX DLL is installed.
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