I have a HP a6400f PC running Vista Home Premium (32-bit) SP1 on a Pentium Dual CPU E220 @2.20 GHz with 3GB RAM, Intel GMA 3100 graphics with 286MB memory (a integrated graphics chip on the motherboard, but its enough to run Aero). Dxdiag reports DirectX 10 but I also have Direct 9.0c installed from another game. The Intel GMA 3100 supposedly supports pixel shader 2.0 and vertex shader model 3.0. I don't have a software firewall, I rely upon a firewall built into my router which does not manage outgoing connections.
When I launch the demo I get a "Kings Bounty (online) warning" telling me that the applications trial period is about to expire, but also stating that I have 999 days 23 hours, 37 minutes left and it will not expire until sept 25, 2011 19:15pm. It has a OK and a Activate button. If I press OK it exits. If I press Activate it prompts me for a serial number which I don't have since I haven't bought the game. I worked around that using
3DAnalyze to launch it with Emulate HW TnL caps set.
I then started getting the
D3DERR_INVALIDCALL .\BMRender\rmode.cpp error after creating the character and starting to load the actual game. I installed the
latest 9.0c DirectX. I then installed the
DirectX SDK , found
dxcpl.exe in the utilities directory and configured the DirectX control panel per the directions (change the Debug Output Level slider, select the Use Retail Version of Direct3D 9 etc.). I upgraded the video drivers to the latest version. I still get the error when I finish creating a character and it loads the actual game.
What do I do next? I'm not willing to buy a graphics card to fix this. I'm running the demo with several settings dropped from high to normal to improve performance, and music/sound disabled.