I am attempting to run Oblivion on a Mac that runs the game beautifully in Bootcamp (probably not a hardware issue), but I can't seem to make it work in Parallels. I am running Windows XP in Parallels 4.0, which is supposed to be able to support the DirectX 9.0 that the game requires, yet I keep getting the "Failed to initialize renderer. nixadapterdesc::devicecaps() failed." error that seems to be a symptom of inadequate drivers/hardware. I have reinstalled DirectX on my virtual machine at the appropriate version and went ahead and reinstalled my graphics card's (ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro) driver while I was at it out of desperation. A check of my installed hardware tells me that I have a PCI Device and VGA Compatible Video Controller that have not been properly installed to the virtual machine and that it is unable to find any drivers for those devices as am I (not honestly certain it's even relevant). I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can offer in this matter, as I find rebooting just to play Oblivion to be a nuisance.

Probably the best its going to get though..... Running an O/S, under an emulator, under another O/S, is NOT going to be conducive to getting a playable game. Oblivion is already pretty demanding on hardware, and asking your hardware to perform the convoluted dance you have set up, is, in my opinion, just too much.

Yes, I'm not sure why you're wasting your time on this. Just run the game on XP via bootcamp.

I'm glad I found this thread, it confirmed what I feared: it isn't the mods I added right after install, but the game itself.

I just got a shiny new mac for Christmas. It's a beautiful machine, top of the line, probably absolutely superior hardware, though I'm very green at using macs. Once I found out Oblivion wasn't going to play on Mac, I looked for an emulator, and friends recommended Parallels. I installed Windows on Parallels, then installed Oblivion, then installed lots of mods, then ran the game... and entering the game, instead of graphics, I only see a field of gray and a crosshair.

Is there any known solution to this problem in this emulator? I could download another emulator, if this other one you mention works better, but will that involve a reinstallation of Windows, and then Oblivion, and then the mods? I'm rather new at this... Or is there a simple solution anyone knows?

If you have a licensed copy of windows, just use bootcamp to dual boot. When you want to play windows games, boot it into windows. Etc.

Trying to run as demanding a game as oblivion, under an emulator, running an O/S, running under another O/S, just isn't going to give anything remotely like a playable game. That is going to be true for any emulator.

Thanks for replying!

So to make sure I'm hearing you right, are you telling me that a) The solution is to install bootcamp and run the game through that one instead, B) to run an emulator in an emulator, or c) that it can't be done?

Use bootcamp to install windows. Bootcamp is a boot manager, so, instead of booting up into OS/X, you will boot natively to windows. (no emulators at all.) Once set up, It will simply give you a choice when you fire up your machine to boot to windows, or, the mac O/S. If your hardware is up to the task, Oblivion should work then.

Thanks for all the advice.
I seem to have begun to make it work... adjusting the video settings to less than epic proportions, and making the resolution more manageable, it seems to have forgiven me and I'm now running the game in Parallels, although with some bugs. Right now I'm just working on balancing my mods into something that works without crashing, and it's become apparent that this is now a mod issue, now that I've resolved the video settings. Thanks for your help nevertheless, and I'll take my remaining concerns to the Mod forum.

Parallels 6 claims to be able to run Oblivion. I suspect that claim would only be good for vanilla Oblivion, or with mods that add no particular load to the system.

I run both Mac and PC here, and I agree that Bootcamp is the best way to do this. Bootcamp is not a difficult installation, and it will create the necessary partition for Windows. You can still use Parallels within the Mac environment, or you can reboot to the Windows side for full capability.

You don't need to download anything. The Bootcamp installation tool is located in your Utilities folder, in Applications.