give error when starting on Windows Xp

first message is given
"Switching to reference rasterizer a
software device that implements the entire
direct3D feature set but runs very slowly"

2nd message right after this is.
Failed creating direct 3D device

Any idea what is wrong or is there somehting missing in my pc?

"Failed to create

under gallery/examples, don't forget to download each project file zip ie fire.zip. They are free.

http://www.desktoppaints.com/ipage.php?page=examples&item=tiger

Hi, This Program is pretty cool!! I always liked it and know how to create fun cinematic pictures out of my own background images or photographs. This pleasant activity is called CREATIVITY, lol, or simple Art. If people never imagined that still photos could move..we would not have Films?:) So - relax and make your own Moving Pictures.

For those who appreciate this Program, but are not familiar with how it works - Use Examples to start with (they "live" in My Documents Folder, and it's always useful to make a copy of these original Examples and save it somewhere safe in case creative changes are made to them and not saved properly as separate Project/screensaver they get spoiled), see what you like, add your own background and play about with all available features (as well as adding or removing what's not needed) and do "save as" from Menu down and voile!

If you purchase/d Extension Pack - it can always be added to either A.S.M, or A.Wallpaper.M. main Program's Folder, and when you place it's Reg Key underneath the one given for this Program - the small advert from "Add animation" window goes away.

Come Christmas:) - "Glass Ball" Effect can produce beautiful Snow Globes, and if saved as Windows Screensavers - can be a nice seasonal Gift with someone's photo in it.

Trust me, this is nothing like Astro shmastro!:) if you're in charge. Just be creative and have fun. Making actual "screensavers" is nothing new under the sun, but this Program is a decent animation Tool.

I absolutely love screensavers! Ever since I got my computer in '99 I've always loved to watch them - and I still do - they're fun and they're relaxing. :)

I like making my own screensavers too because I can make them look the way I want. So I appreciate this software very much - thank you! :)

Lynn

I've tried the last two versions of this prog before and found it to be quite easy to use. But, adding weather effects that looked fairly realistic was accomplished better with a prog called Corner-A Art Studio, which was a previous GAotD offered here. But, if you want to create a simple screensaver/animation todays offering does offer several other features as well.

Now,I've said it before I'll say it again... Just like placing photos/mementos etc on your locker, fridge, desk at work, or as a background pic on your computer desktop, "screensavers" are for PERSONALISATION. OKAY Giovanni et al?! EVERYONE knows monitor "burn in" is no longer really a problem nowadays but I and many others would like to PERSONALIZE my desktop. Is that okay with you? Thanks.
- "personalize":
verb customize, individualize, make to order, make distinctive, give a personal touch to.

...(BTW: G.a.L.!)

My 11-year-old grandson had a great time using this program (older version downloaded earlier), and made a bunch of screensavers with it without any help on my part.

Easy, fun, creative.

Who needs useful?

Downloaded & installed on Win8 64 with no problems. Haven't played with it yet, but it looks like it's going to be fun. I'm an amature photographer & do a lot of water photography, so I can see a use here for me. Personally, I love a good screensaver where I can use my own photos. Digital photo frames are expensive & screensavers are a cheaper alternative for showing off your collection. To all those bitching about "yet another useless screensaver", get out of your chair, buy a camera and see if you can actually achieve something useful before blasting your vitriol all over this page. For me, this one's a keeper. Thanks GAOTD & DesktopPaints.

Downloaded, installed, activated and running great. Ok...so it's not for everyone. I'm 72, my great granddaughter is 5. We sat here and cracked up creating funny animated faces...choose a photo of her, animated her legs, added some dance sound, and watched her dance. So funny. Yep....it's a keeper for me. I can see all kinds of possibilities. I'll get to the more serene creating later. :)

I haven't saved anything yet...so we'll see how that goes. Thanks GOTD and DesktopPaints.

Looks nice. Installed without any problem.

Of course today it's not very useful (were not the stories about burning phosphor just urban legends, by the way?) but if I find some free time I may play with this a little.

Ideas for such slideshows can be quite many. Some of them even useful and/or profitable. Educational ones, for example. With Japanese words, hiragana signs, or MMA finishing holds. (This is a great idea! I go and create a screen!)

I purchased the program when it was offered another time. Got the extended pac as well. Yes, they are rather obsolete but one the other hand they are fun and had a number of those screen savers (provided free of charge) downloaded from my photographic website by my visitors. Not very useful, but, again, fun.

The cool thing about today's offer is that unlike the Sunday offers, this is a "screensaver maker" meaning anyone with a creative flair can enjoy another outlet for messing around with their own image galleries or artwork. Thanks GOTD and DTPaints.

To the 10's of thousands who use those evil "energy wastering" screensavers, I give you a free pass for this week. I turned my hot water heater down a degree before leaving for work. :)

The quaint and perennial anti-standby screen rants often point a self-righteous finger at the "useless" energy consumption. Truth be told, it's negligible compared to what I'll bet most of the ranters waste by keeping a host of devices plugged in 24/7 around their houses - a/c adapters, cellphone chargers, always on/instant on tv's, cd players, coffee makers, 100-watt incandescent lights vs. fluorescent or LED, etc. How about all the houses that aren't on programmable thermostats for heat and a/c, and non-weatherproofed houses that leak energy like a sieve? Compared to those energy hogs, screensavers are a molecular drop in the bucket.

DesktopPaints provided a fix to the deal and corrected a problem to the download link. I purchased the GOTD deal. I'm playing with it now, and it is amazing with all the goodies added. I'm already up to speed because of the last giveaway. Getting the animated objects to follow general area and go in the right direction and scroll around, or stay on screen using the bounce off sides method, takes a bit of getting use to but the adjustments make sense and let you work within regions of activity. My kids got it all figured out on the animated desktop maker - that is why I grabbed this deal up.

With both this one and the previous giveaway, you can also import gif animations (make sure they have a clear background), but having a built in library is awesome. The kids are going to love this.

Swooped up the deal once the offer was corrected on the site (paid $7.99 through paypal) - but now my download link provided by the TrialPay server does not function.

Thumbs up for making these fun programs, but somebody needs to get a handle on the administrative details.

(QUOTE FROM #1, NEKO. Screen “savers” are quite obsolete these days. Best thing you can do with idle time is set screen to go power save.
Comment by neko — September 5th, 2013 at 3:21 am
Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-43))

Speaking for everyone else is always risky, particularly if you've forgotten children, grandchildren, elderly aunts, uncles and other sweet relatives who love these screensavers.
This GOTD is useful and more than welcome, so thanks DesktopPaints and GOTD.
Let folk have fun!

BTW, what difference does it make how much of a resource hog a screensaver is? You are not doing anything on the computer while it is running!

If you don't want, or even like, screensavers, that's fine. But why constantly belittle them to those who do enjoy them? And why give them negative votes just because you personally do not use them, that is not a fair assessment of the individual software offerings.

As for complaints of power consumption, take that up with computer hardware manufacturers. Our computers are the only, let me reiterate - ONLY - electronic devices in our lives that continually use more and more power. Televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, water heaters, even digital clocks all now use much less power than their counterparts twenty years ago; the average desktop now uses three times the power required by its counterpart just ten years ago.

Ok, so the original intention of screen savers was to prevent burn in on your monitor. Now you have a flat panel that doesn't burn in so you don't need one. Well you are ok if you always just put it to sleep, if not, they still burn in. Here is an excerpt from EHOW.

"Burn-in" or retention of an old image is a phenomenon that often happens to flat panel TVs, especially plasma TVs. It emerges from static images that leave a permanent mark on the screen. These permanent marks or "after-image-ghosts" degrade your screen display.


http://www.ehow.com/how_1000456_repair-flat-panel.html

So there is no harm in screen savers, and they are fun. Stop griping. If you don't use or want something, don't give it a thumbs down or a tirade / rant, just don't use it or comment on it. If it's actually ~bad~ software THEN give it thumbs down.

I have used DestopPaints screensavers. Though many people think of them only as screensavers (standby screen or whatever)and bash them, the DestopPaints screensavers are absolutely fascinating, as this is the the only program which allows us to produce screensavers with our own pictures and many effects. Results are amazing.

Thanks GAOTD and DestopPaints for offering us versions whenever the program is updated.

Animated Screensaver Maker [like the wallpaper app from the same devs] is pretty cool, but I soured on them when, after spending an afternoon creating all this stuff, I found none of it would run on any of the PCs I tried -- they lacked the graphics horsepower. That's probably less of an issue today as on-board graphics have advanced quite a bit. Some of the desktop or wallpaper images Microsoft [& Bing] have freely available make a great starting point or base image to add animation FX to, though you probably can't give away the results because of the original (C).


Purely FWIW...

#2: "Enough with this absurd, irrelevant and pedantic rant about screensavers not being necessary anymore."

I'm agnostic about the things, but I think that many objections spring from the original intent of screensavers, i.e. to prevent monitor burn in before there was a stand-by mode to blank the screen. Nowadays, when most any screen can be put into power saving mode, it's a matter of entertainment, or advertising, or decoration. There are many video files, especially on Blu-Ray discs that perform the same function, usually with better quality & more efficiently, but using a screensaver in Windows to accomplish this sort of thing requires practically no effort so many folks use them. Those screensavers that have been on GOTD can be started like any other app, which means no waiting for the timer or setting Windows to use the one you want to watch, & I honestly think that if they were given some other name besides screensavers many if not most objections would disappear.

"Regarding the energy waste issue, videogames certainly play a more important part in global warming than screensavers!"

Debating the global warming part, i.e. total energy use, would require data we don't have. Some screensavers use almost 100% GPU, while some require very little -- it's the same with games. Additionally different GPUs & CPUs consume different amounts of power, so 100% usage on one machine may mean much more electricity consumed, or much less than another. If you use a screensaver rather than have whatever hardware go into a low power mode, or off, *& no one's watching it*, then obviously it's wasting energy, the same way that leaving the room for a long time with the lights on &/or the TV on or maybe a game still running on your PC/laptop etc. wastes energy.

That said, screensavers themselves are often less efficient, IF that sort of thing matters to you -- to keep the file size relatively small scenes are usually created [& recreated] rather than being rendered just once & then played back whenever. Playing video most often requires less horsepower & that means cheaper hardware plus less electricity used -- a biz using a monitor [or HDTV] for advertising or decoration is more likely to use a Blu-Ray player or a lower energy media player rather than a PC. Quality's higher too as a bonus since you're not trying to render anything real-time.

* * *

#11: Downloaded and installed without a hitch!
Uninstalled just the same! only faster.
Made my PC come to a crawl running win 7 with 12gb ram pc less than 18 month old.
There must be a resource problem as when I uninstalled the software, it asked why and one choice is made system slow!"

Previews & the screensavers/animated wallpapers are dependent on graphics hardware, not CPU or RAM. *IF* it's important enough to you, could check for later graphics drivers, probably from the GPU manufacturer rather than Windows update or the company that made your laptop/PC or graphics card [e.g. get them from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia], though that's not a guarantee it'll work.

Yay! I love this program, so glad it's being offered again. Laptop crashed ,I lost everything and am starting over. This is a very fun program. Boo for all you thumbs down people.

A BIG thumbs up for Levitiquetus! Nicely put and I totally agree with you! Screensavers are not useless, they are great relaxers. I love to sit back and watch all the intricate goings on. Thank you GOTD and DesktopPaints!

"For this occasion only, this add-on comes with a free full license for Animated Screensaver Maker. By ordering “DP Extension Pack”, you get a personal permanent key for today’s Giveaway of the Day program."

You say its free but charge 7.99 on the page? is it free or is this a miss print? because I have the software but want the free add on pack.

To disable the update check I simply renamed the file "AutoUpdator.exe" to "AutoUpdator.bak" in this folder:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Thraex Software\AutoUpdator

In theory you could also just delete the file...

pretty good stuff to encourage creativity in children....and yes, we are aware, otherwise not necessary...

@ Robert Reilly

Sorry fro this issue. The special offer page was corrected.

Downloaded and installed without a hitch!
Uninstalled just the same! only faster.
Made my PC come to a crawl running win 7 with 12gb ram pc less than 18 month old.
There must be a resource problem as when I uninstalled the software, it asked why and one choice is made system slow!

@ Doyle Allen

To save your animation as a GIF, wait until next time GOTD offers DP Animation Maker, another Desktop Paints program. This one is only for screensavers.

Well, to begin with, my computer is always on. I personally enjoy the screensavers. There are times I just sit back to watch them while reading a book. I'm not expecting a fireplace, or a beach view, or a koi pond, or any other number of things, anytime soon, and I sure don't want to see the same desktop every single time I walk by the computer. So I enjoy a good screensaver as well as the kids. That being said, this program is fun and really simple. There is no need to downgrade it or belittle the company for making "useless" programs. Which it seems you all seem to love doing. If you don't like it, who cares? If you shut your computer off to save money, who cares? If you don't try the program, don't download it. Don't talk about it, don't complain about it, don't down vote it. Honestly that just shows you being ignorant. Is it really so hard to close a tab or window without complaining about something you don't or won't use? Since I'm one of the few, GOOD JOB Desktop Paints! Terrific program that is fun to use.

Very cool animations and methods to make them are very simple. I could not get the option for other than screensaver. The gif option would not come up along with the other options your site shows that should be available clicking the export button.

the application failed to initialise properly (0xc0150002) baaaa!!

This GAOTD is a pretty good software for animating static photos and building screensavers, but I'm afraid that it's also pretty much useless!!

In fact SCREENSAVERS are no longer necessary nowadays...this is why:

http://www.howtogeek.com/128644/htg-explains-why-screen-savers-are-no-longer-necessary

So I can't figure out why there are still developers out there who stubbornly try to sell useless software like this GAOTD charging 30 bucks for that (and I also wonder why screensavers are offered here at least once a week).

BEST FREEWARE ALTERNATIVES???

Well, as far as I'm concerned, there are just a few ones on the market maybe because screensavers are so useless and resource hogs programs that any developer out there is interested to waste his time by offering a piece of software like this GAOTD for FREE.....LOL!!

Anyway, joking aside a good FREE alternative may be the superb freeware "JetPhoto" (actually it does much more than making screesavers):

http://www.jetphotosoft.com/web/home

Just take a tour here to see what this amazing FREE APP can do for you without charging you a dime:

http://www.jetphotosoft.com/web/?s=jpstudio_0

Live Demo:
http://www.jetphotosoft.com/web/?s=demo

Full Tutorial:
http://www.jetphotosoft.com/web/?s=product_studio

See also:
http://dottech.org/103187/windows-how-to-create-custom-screensavers-and-photoimage-slideshows-with-irfanview
http://www.instantstorm.com
http://www.gphotoshow.com/gpshow_free.htm
http://www.gphotoshow.com/cube-photo-show-free.htm (turns your pictures into 3D screensavers)

My 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 cent for screensavers!!

I read the comment for # 2
You seem to write in English ok. What's the bull about French.If you don't like it don't partake. As for the screensaver I agree enough is enough no matter how you spell it. My vote is thumbs down on both.

Screensaver... Standby Screen... whatever you want to call them. I call them resource hogs.

I've been playing with the animated wall paper maker given away a couple weeks ago (also made by DestopPaints), and it's rather fun... my kids love it... and so I was curious when this one said, "By ordering “DP Extension Pack”, you get a personal permanent key for today’s Giveaway of the Day program."

The special deal is a webpage made just for us with the program half off and the add-on an additional $8
(For a grand total of $23) - it's almost as much as buying the program for full price.

From this site:
For this occasion only, this add-on comes with a FREE full license for Animated Screensaver Maker.

From their site:
Special Offer for GOTD Users ... DP Extension Pack + lifetime license for Animated Screensaver Maker for half the price


*FREE does not equal *HALF PRICE WITH OTHER PURCHASE

It's a fun program, and when I seen the deal here, I was thinking I might buy something. What is going on?

Enough with this absurd, irrelevant and pedantic rant about screensavers not being necessary anymore. WE KNOW THAT! Who doesn’t here? It is hammered everytime a screensaver or screensaver maker is offered. By the way, we French don’t call them screensavers (économiseurs d’écran) anymore, but standby screens (écrans de veille) which is exactly what they are now. So call them standby screens, if it can help, and feel free to use them! In my life I distract a certain -reasonable - amount of time for totally useless, unproductive, uneconomical activities like art, culture, friendship, leisure, and… yes… fun, mere fun, desperately purposeless fun. I expect the same from my computer, which is supposed to reflect me.

Regarding the energy waste issue, videogames certainly play a more important part in global warming than screensavers! And why would it be more noble, respectable, trendy, geeky, to spend hours machine-gunning zombies or aliens than minutes looking at little rabbits making leaps in a meadow? (Not my personal choice, but protecting the galaxy from invaders is not either.)

I personally create my own screensavers with animation or slideshow programs, some of them found here, and I use a manager to start them randomly after 5 minutes of no activity. It is the amount of daydreaming I authorize myself before being gently reminded, by music and photos or images of my choice, that it is time to stop staring stupidly at my idle screen, and focus again. And you know what? sometimes, I admit, I would spare a few more minutes watching, during which you won’t even make me feel guilty about this “useless” extra energy consumption, as I sort my garbage, use the public transportation system etc. And the hell with the difference between CRT screens, LCD screens and whatever they can be made with!

Specifically about today’s giveaway, main new features to justify the upgrade for those who already have ASM from last giveaway of version 3.1.5:
- a zoom (called ”navigator”) to work more precisely with brushes;
- the support of text;
- a new smoke animation, improvement of the lightning animation;
- 5 new brushes: radial wave, zoom, rotation, stream, bend, plus an improvement of the drift brush.
Etc.

Screen "savers" are quite obsolete these days. Best thing you can do with idle time is set screen to go power save.