oysterstew: I was getting the "It is not possible to create the Direct3D rendering device" too and after a search found a post with a fix that worked for me in Win7 – quoted below is the post I found:
Isis said…
… if anyone is having trouble playing this, and is getting an error "It was not possible to create the Direct3D rendering device. You may need to reinstall DirectX and/or update drivers for your graphics card"
Then you are missing a file, that only a certain version of directx 9 has. It is called d3dx9_35.dll and you can download it here;
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?d3dx9_35 Once downloaded, cut and paste it into your system32 folder. Reboot and the game will work.
Instead of placing in Windows system32 folder I simply pasted a copy into the bin directory for Painkiller Black as well as the bin directory for Ressurection and Overdose – did not reboot and both ran fine
No need to do this. Just go to Microsoft's download site and get the latest DirectX redistributable or use the web updater. Both Vista and 7 use multiple versions of DirectX and the version of DX9 they have is DX9L. This isn't the full DX9 library, so use the redist or web updater and it'll get you all the missing DX9 files and put them in the right place in your system. What you've done has only duplicated the file in question and made it only work for those games where you've put the file.
