Problem: When loading the game you receive this error dialog:

Cause: The game is unable to create a DirectX display device.

Details:
Some low end graphics adapters do not support DirectX 9 properly. This is mostly a device driver issue as properly written drivers will support software equivalents that any remotely modern machine can handle since The Political Machine is not particularly intense graphically (we've run it here on a 6 year old P2-400Mhz machine with a TNT 1 card fine, it's all about the drivers).

Solutions:
If you have the Intel 82815 integrated graphics adapter, we are currently trying to find a solution. Make sure you have downloaded the latest drivers for it. Intel no longer supports this adapter or earlier ones and their drivers did not fully support some Direct3D calls (hence the problem at hand).  We have made resolving this a high priority.

There are some ATI mobile graphics adapters that also do not support the DirectX calls The Political Machine uses.  We have tested it on the Radeon 8500, 9000, and later and it works fine there.  But the ATI Radeon IW and IX seem to have problems.  Make sure you update to the latest drivers on this.

If you have updated to v1.01 you can try this test version:
https://www.politicalmachine.com/test/polmachine101b.zip 

It has enhanced support for 16bit DirectX and may resolve your issue on some video cards.

Make sure you have the latest service pack installed (on Windows XP, some GeForce cards have problems unless they are running SP 1).

Some useful command line parameters:

c:/>polmachine w

c:/>polmachine nointro

(or combine them c:>polmachine w nointro)

These will allow the game to run in a window and skip the intro.  This may or may not help.

We will keep you informed with how things are proceeding.