DirectX Features are unavailable

Question

After installing Ranger Remote Control onto a Windows 2000/XP workstation the DVD and Media Play back is slow or does not work at all.

Symptoms

DirectX Diagnostic Tool shows the DirectX Features (DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGP Texture) as not available. The associated buttons are also disabled.

DVD or media playback may not work or the performance is very slow. The DVD or media player software uses more CPU as it compensates for the reduced DirectX features.

Cause

This issue affects both Windows 2000 and XP workstations. The problem occurs when the mirror driver that Remote Control uses to hook in and intercept the video instructions being sent to the display is loaded.

The mirror driver is a method provided by Microsoft to enable software manufacturers (such as ourselves) to intercept screen instruction in a more stable and reliable way than hooking directly into the video driver. Unfortunately there appears to be some fundamental problems with playing DVD's when a Mirror driver is running on a machine.

Microsoft has also issued a KB article with the same problem using NetMeeting which also uses a Mirror driver on Windows 2000.

Resolution

From version 7.01 of Remote Control it is possible to only load the mirror driver when the client is being viewed or connected. As soon as the client is no longer viewed or connected the mirror driver is unloaded restoring the DirectX features

Instructions

To configure this you need to set the "Enable DVD playback Support" setting on the Ranger Remote Control Client Configurator. In the section entitled 'Enable DVD Playback and Direct3D support' tick either 'Except while viewed' or 'Except while connected'.

This setting is applied on the local machine, to configure all the other machines in the same way distribute the client32.ini file using Remote Controls Remote Deploy.

Testing

Try and run a DVD and also run 'dxdiag' and then go to the video tab. You should then see the DirectX Features are enabled again.