Been busy, hence the lack of a reply. Thanks for the suggestion Nikel, I'll certainly try the S2003 drivers! No drivers S2008 in Windows Update as of yet and I'm not holding my breath while waiting for them either....

Err... Well, it is the title of this thread you started "Failed to initialise DirectX Audio . DirectX 8 may not be installed".... I have searched "Failed to initialise DirectX Audio " and in several places, to update audio drivers was recommended It's true that you can try editing the general.opt (...

Err... Well, it is the title of this thread you started "Failed to initialise DirectX Audio . DirectX 8 may not be installed".... I have searched "Failed to initialise DirectX Audio " and in several places, to update audio drivers was recommended Sorry, I'm a dimwit.... Even more so than in general...

Uh...audio? How do you figure that's the problem? In any case, I've neither updated or reinstalled those drivers, since as far as I'm aware they work just fine.

Pocus: will do, cheers.

What a bummer.... :( Actually I've been on nights ever since I bought it and have only had a look at things in short fits and spurts, so I'll give it the weekend at least when I can put in a more concentrated effort. If neither google nor my brain comes up with a workable solution, I'll take you up ...

Well bugger... Updating DX did nothing to alleviate my pains unfortunately. Still the same fault message as in the OP.

Pocus: I think it's most likely to be an issue with the legacy support as well tbh. I cleverly deduced this after finding that DxDiag has no option to check for such support at all under S2008. :-) No "Test Direct3D" option, no green cube any longer. I've downloaded the latest DirectX redistributabl...

The file is indeed there and I've also already tried the other prospective solution without any change to my sad predicament. Does this mean I'm well and truly stuck, or is there still hope of a cure? "By the way, very nice PC" Thanks; I must confess I'm quite happy with it. ;-) I ought to be, consi...

Ahhhh, another day...eh, night...awaits! Please find DxDiag.txt enclosed below. Hope there's an answer in there somewhere, as the game looks positively yummy!

Will do, no problem - and thanks for the swift reply! Sometime later though, as I'm on my way to bed after a night shift. (not sure what that smiley means, but I couldn't find one that says "I'm really, really tired"...)

....is the message I get every time I try to start the game. Followed by "Runtime error 216 at 00403DEE". Additional details are as follows: Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: NCP.exe Application Version: 2.0.0.0 Application Timestamp: 2a425e19 Fault Module Name: kerne...