As many of you might already know, there is going to be a huge patch this upcoming Tuesday, October 31st (Yea! A Halloween patch! hehe). At this time, Verant will be making changes to the client to use the latest version of DirectX, 7.0a. This means that a lot of players using older sound and video cards, and running older versions of DirectX may need to do some upgrading to avoid having problems with the game after Tuesday. Hobart, from the Sony Quality Assurance - Bugs/Testing forum, made a very concise and detailed post on what we should do to get ready for the changes. I have posted it in complete below for everyone...
The patch introduces all the DirectX7.0 or greater enhancements. It also introduces a number of User Interface (UI) changes. All EverQuest players will need to upgrade to version 7.0 or greater of DirectX. It is also highly recommended that players check for updated sound and video drivers from their manufacturer. We also highly recommend that players install Directx7.0 or greater and then their latest video or sound card drivers after Directx7.0 or greater as been successfully installed.
Players can download DirectX7.0a from http://www.microsoft.com/directx
If players do not know what brand of sound card you have, you can right-click on "My Computer", go to properties, click on "Device Manager", and open "Sound, Video, and Game Controllers". If you use a SBLive sound card, you can run "LiveUpdate" from the Windows Control Panel off of your start menu. View our Sound FAQ (http://everquest.station.sony.com/s_sound.shtml) for driver locations and more details.
Those players with the SoundBlaster Live series of sound cards should also have LiveWare3.0 installed. They can be found at http://www.creativelabs.com
Next, go to the website for your 3D accelerator. There are a number of different manufacturers, and it is preferred that you visit the website for the manufacturer of your card. You can at your option go to the chipset manufacturer site. Most will be able to use either www.3dfx.com (for Voodoo cards) or www.nvidia.com (for TNT/GeForce cards). We recommend those that have NVIDIA chipsets goto the NVIDIA website listed above. Download and install the latest drivers for your card and operating system. See our Video FAQ (http://everquest.station.sony.com/s_video.shtml) for more details.
Many players have the latest drivers and directx7.0 or greater installed on their systems. However, they still experience some graphical anomalies. At this time it is recommended that they reinstall DirectX7.0 or greater and then install their latest video drivers next. This has been proven to fix the majority of graphical problems.
We also suggest that players take some time before the patch on Tuesday and login to the Test Server to make sure their systems are up-to-date. You can log on to the Test Server by running the testeverquest.exe. We recommend that before doing this that player's back up their eqclient.ini file to a different directory. The changes on Test Server will alter this file, and when returning to the Live Servers will result in their settings being set back to default.
If after you have completed all the above updates and are still experiencing graphical or sound problems, please do the following.
1. Run DXDIAG.EXE from your Start menu (click start, run, then type dxdiag.exe)
2. Click the "Save all Information" button at the bottom of the program window.
3. Save the file as dxdiag.txt
4. Email that file to eqtesting@verant.com along with a complete description of your problem, any text from any error messages that are presented, and a phone number that you can be reached at if you are willing to assist our test department over the phone.
5. If you experience a crash to the desktop while running EverQuest, please email your dbg.txt file from your EverQuest directory to the email address above.
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