"Missing x3daudio1_7.dll when starting Surviving Mars.

[rongee]

I'm trying to run Surviving Mars. When I try to start the game from within Steam, it opens a window saying that it's preparing to start the game, and then just closes that window and nothing more. It's as if it wasn't starting at all.

I eventually created a separate shortcut in windows 10 to start the game, and it's here that I'm getting the error message. I don't know if there's a log in Steam that would tell me the same information.

It seems like others have had this problem in other games, and the solution was generally to go to the Microsoft site and download and run the latest runtime for DIrectX. I have DirectX 12 running on Windows 10 and according the MS website, there are no downloads available, only updates through Windows Update.

I've tried reinstalling the game with no luck.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

Ron

[Mardoin69]

Here, go to this site and you'll understand what you need to do. Not sure why MS didn't think to add DX 9.0c to Windows 10 when most every older game and even lot of the newer ones REQUIRE it to run properly. MS must have thought DX 10, 11, & 12 could do the job. But, they don't.
Site for explanation and links: https://www.dosgamers.com/directx-9-windows-10

[rongee]

Went there, but the links no longer work, going to an MS page that just says that the files aren't there. In the end, I found an older version of the Direct X developers kit from 2008, and the X3daudio file is 1_2 version, so too old.

[rongee]

FINALLY! I searched around for awhile and was able to find the right version of DirectX on the TechSpot website. Like all things, you want to be careful with downloads, but I've used Techspot before for reviews and things like that. And I virus scanned the files. Once I installed that version of DirectX, I rebooted, and the game started up. Going through the tutorials now. So far. so good.

Thanks again for your help.

Ron

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Steam does download a bunch of redistributables that includes DX9.0c that, if your system somehow ended up without DX9, you could have run to (re)install the missing stuff. But if you found a suitable and safe file then it doesn't matter too much.

[SkiRich]

Should have went to the DirectX 11 download site at MS.
Or use this, again from MS.
https://download.microsoft.com/download/1/7/1/1718CCC4-6315-4D8E-9543-8E28A4E18C4C/dxwebsetup.exe