Video Problems Crashing Some Games - Hardware & Software

I have an nvidia 8600 GTS with the latest drivers, and when attempting to play some games they will simply crash. I first noticed this with Gratuitous Space Battle, where the game would instantly crash to the desktop after starting it. I had a similar problem with Modern Warfare 2, where I could see the splash screen and hear the startup sound. However, MW2 stopped responding immediately after that. My Gratuitous Space Battle debug files (below) debug.txt [code] ----DEBUG FILE---- Windows XP detected GSB Debug File. App version Full 1.50 Desktop resolution is 1280 x 1024 Initialising Direct3D [/code] drawdebug.txt [code] Initialising 3D Engine Driver : nv4_disp.dll Description : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS DeviceName : \\.\DISPLAY1 Checking For Shader Support NumSimultaneousRTs:4 hal_caps.PixelShaderVersion >= D3DPS_VERSION(2, 0) About to Create 3D Device with width: 0 and height : 0 Attempting hardware Vertex Processing Attempting software Vertex Processing [/code] errors.txt [code] 25/12/2010 - 22::8 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::8 - CreateDevice 25/12/2010 - 22::8 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::8 - CreateDevice failed again 25/12/2010 - 22::8 - Failed to initialise 3D Engine:..\src\Game.cpp 321 25/12/2010 - 22::16 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::16 - CreateDevice 25/12/2010 - 22::16 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::16 - CreateDevice failed again 25/12/2010 - 22::16 - Failed to initialise 3D Engine:..\src\Game.cpp 321 25/12/2010 - 22::20 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::20 - CreateDevice 25/12/2010 - 22::20 - D3DERR_INVALIDCALL 25/12/2010 - 22::20 - CreateDevice failed again [/code] From my errors.txt file, I thought it was a problem with my DirectX version, so I checked dxdiag. However, I had 9.0c (running on Windows XP) and all the visual and audio tests ran fine. Additionally, some other DirectX-reliant games like Super Meat Boy run perfectly. Is it possible I'm missing some 3D component of DirectX, even though the 3D cube-test in dxdiag ran perfectly?

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

[QUOTE=IpHa;26969154]Try reinstall DirectX: [url]http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&displaylang=en[/url][/QUOTE] I tried updating it and rebooting, no dice. Also, there appears to be no way of uninstalling DirectX short of reinstalling Windows XP. [editline]26th December 2010[/editline] Modern Warfare 1 runs fine too. What the fuck

bump.