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DirectX phoning home?

Started by ggambett Mar 4, 2006 at 9:05 PM 13 replies 3k views

Original Post

Mar 4, 2006 at 9:05 PM

Scary stuff. Apparently the DirectX runtime tries to phone home (crl.microsoft.com) at game startup, which obviously frightens players (a firewall alert isn't nice!). Google says it's Direct3D 9 trying to verify that the certified video drivers still have valid WHQL certificates. After some more googling I've found some ways to disable it manually from Windows, but this isn't an acceptable solution for users. Is there a way to programatically disable this "feature"? BTW I'm looking for a D3D 7.0 compatible solution.

dave

Mar 4, 2006 at 9:24 PM

Why do you want to disable this feature?

ggambett

Mar 4, 2006 at 9:31 PM

Because it slows down startup (1-2 secs best case, up to 20 secs if there is no internet connection), and because players (especially casual game players, my customers) are scared to death of a firewall dialog popping up. I want them to buy my game, not to run away screaming "OMG SPYWARE" :)

dave

Mar 4, 2006 at 9:38 PM

I havn't found this.

Dave

Sneftel

Mar 4, 2006 at 9:43 PM

Quote:
Original post by ggambett
Because it slows down startup (1-2 secs best case, up to 20 secs if there is no internet connection), and because players (especially casual game players, my customers) are scared to death of a firewall dialog popping up. I want them to buy my game, not to run away screaming "OMG SPYWARE" :)

Given that players don't seem to be running away screaming from every other D3D game, why would they from yours?

ggambett

Mar 5, 2006 at 12:05 PM

Dave : Because not every D3D game does this.
Sneftel : Because not every D3D game does this.
Anonymous : Thanks, but I rather not require D3D8 just for this :(

DrewGreen

Mar 5, 2006 at 12:16 PM

I'm curious - do you have an example of a game that does this? I've never come across it.. ever. And I play a lot of games.

ggambett

Mar 5, 2006 at 1:37 PM

Our latest one does ( http://www.playfirst.com/game/piratepoppers ), and by googling around I've found many other references, such as the Rome : Total War demo ( http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/rometotalwar/download.html?sid=6105478 ) and a couple more.

jollyjeffers

Mar 5, 2006 at 3:07 PM

So you're saying that you have D3D7-based code that is phoning home?

What Paul said/thinks is that D3D7 doesn't - and I'm pretty sure from my own memory that it was a new thing with D3D8 and later. That is, it shouldn't be an issue with D3D7.

Jack

ggambett

Mar 5, 2006 at 5:32 PM

Believe me, my Direct3D7 code does. I think D3D7 didn't do it so the API didn't have a way to disable it. Now D3D8 and D3D9 do the check and the corresponding D3D8 and D3D9 API do have ways to disable it. Apparently the problem is using the D3D7 API with installed D3D8 or D3D9.

Fortunately not all D3D7 code does this (in the same machine) so I'm beginning to think D3DX, which I use, does something which most people don't do manually, which triggers this behavior.

circlesoft

Mar 5, 2006 at 5:46 PM

Quote:
Original post by ggambett
Fortunately not all D3D7 code does this (in the same machine) so I'm beginning to think D3DX, which I use, does something which most people don't do manually, which triggers this behavior.

I suppose it is possible, but doubtful. What are you using from D3DX? Since you are using DD7, it would have to be the math stuff, otherwise you would be using actual D3D9 stuff.

ggambett

Mar 5, 2006 at 6:32 PM

I use D3DX to initialize ( D3DXCreateContext() ), a little bit of math, and texture uploading. Actual drawing (just quads - this is a hardware accelerated 2D engine) uses the Device object.

I guess it's D3DXCreateContext(). The D3D8 and D3D9 flags that control this behavior, the ones Paul listed above, are for GetAdapterIdentifier() which I'm not calling directly, but D3DX probably does. Doing my own init without calling GetAdaptorIdentifier() may fix the problem.

ggambett

Mar 7, 2006 at 12:45 PM

Solution : it was indeed D3DXCreateContextEx(). I replaced the init with plain DDraw7/D3D7 code and the problem went away.

circlesoft

Mar 7, 2006 at 12:53 PM

Quote:
Original post by ggambett
Solution : it was indeed D3DXCreateContextEx(). I replaced the init with plain DDraw7/D3D7 code and the problem went away.

Hmm...interesting idea. I heard once that older DD interfaces were actually routed through newer D3D interfaces. Supposedly, this is to ease backwards compatability in hardware. If this is true, it could be that internally, a D3D device is created, which has that driver-checking functionality.

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