I posted this in the bug tracker as well. An odd bug... maybe someone had it before?
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=de ... tid=540676 :
(Tested on both 1.7.1 and 1.7.2)
When I run my Irrlicht program, and then switch to another program in full-screen mode while the Irrlicht program is still running in the background, createDeviceEx will fail (ie: it will return 0).
This is on Windows XP, DirectX8 and DirectX9. OpenGL and software mode are not affected.
"createDevice" is not affected.
There are no error messages or crashes of any sort, even in Irrlicht debug mode, save for the return value of 0 from createDeviceEx.
This may be a setting of createDevice, but possibly not. I used pretty much all the standard settings for createDeviceEx, along with an event callback pointer. For the device parameter, both EIDT_WIN32 and EIDT_BEST was tested. Both full screen (at 800x600) and windowed mode (at 793x574) was tested.
Steps to reproduce:
1) Start a program that uses Irrlicht, with DirectX 8 or 9 under Windows XP.
2) Immediately switch over to another (full-screen) program
3) Your first program should still be running in the background. While you are in the second program, your first program should activate createDeviceEx. (give it some seconds after program start to allow you time to switch over to the second program)
4) createDeviceEx should fail. (return 0)