DirectX Kicker - BETA Version Christian Leinen (July 08, 1999) Introduction -------------- When you start a game (or another application) that uses DirectX and then exit it the DirectX Helper app still stays resident in memory and keeps several related drivers and DLL's running. The idea of this behaviour is to speed up load time, so if you launch another app now that uses DirectX it will usually start up a bit faster because the drivers are already in memory and initialized - ready to go. This is great, as long as you do not need to change settings, which affect exactly the loaded drivers. The problem ------------- On my system I need to adjust the gamma correction and the pixel clock settings for the Voodoo 2 for every game. Some games even require a reduced Hardware acceleration for my SB PCI 128 Soundcard. The changed settings however only take effect if the corresponding drivers are being loaded and initialized, but as long as the DirectX Helper app is running in the background the drivers are already loaded and initialized and will therefore not recognize the new settings. The solution -------------- The solution is to unload the DirectX Helper app from memory. This will also free the captured driver files so the next time a game is started the drivers will be re-loaded again and initialized properly. The recommended way to do this is to reboot the computer or to restart Windows, because the DirectX Helper app does not provide a way to be closed. (note that if you exit its hidden window the app remains running!) Another way is to terminate the process of the app, which will remove the exe-module and all related DLL's from memory. This is exactly what the DirectX Kicker does :) So you do not have to restart Windows just because you changed some DirectX related settings. Details --------- The DirectX Helper app is a file called DDHELP.EXE which resides in your C:\Windows\System\ directory. Usually it keeps the DirectDraw and DirectSound driver files (DDRAW.DLL, DSOUND.DLL) in memory, but can also hold others like the 3Dfx Interactive DirectX drivers for the Voodoo 2 or 3 (3DFX32V2.DLL, 3DFX32V3.DLL etc.). The complete list of processes and modules that are currently running/loaded can be viewed with a system monitoring application like Spy++ from Microsoft or the Process Monitor for Win 95/98 from Leinen Software Development :-) BETA version -------------- The DirectX Kicker is a BETA version because it has only been tested on my computer. However, it works properly and has saved me quit a bit of time so far. If it does not work on your system or produces any errors please email a detailed description to: Bugreport@Leinen.com Christian Leinen Leinen Software Development http://www.Leinen.com