.NET How to detect if DirectX 10 is supported?

Question

I would like to find out from .NET code whether DirectX 10 is supported on the machine, preferably without using managed DirectX or XNA assemblies.

Thank you in adva

Answer 1

You can have a look at the DirectX version installed on your machine using this key hive

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectX

Here's a sample

[assembly: RegistryPermissionAttribute(SecurityAction.RequestMinimum,All = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE")]
class Test
{
    public int DxLevel
    {
        get
        {
            using(RegistryKey key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectX"))
            {
                string versionStr = key.GetValue("Version") as string;

                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(versionStr))
                {
                    var versionComponents = versionStr.Split('.');
                    if (versionComponents.Length > 1)
                    {
                        int directXLevel;
                        if (int.TryParse(versionComponents[1], out directXLevel))
                            return directXLevel;
                    }
                }
                return -1;
            } 
                     }
    }
}

Now if you want to know whether your video card supports DirectX, this is going to require XNA or DirectX interop.

Just a note, I couldn't test that code on my machine right now but that should get you started :)