I've used this method to get Devil May Cry 4 working in DX10 mode, but perhaps it may be helpful to some of you wishing to enjoy Stalker Clear sky maxed out yet have the stability.

I don't know for certain whether this will fix the game crashes in DX10 mode as it can sometimes take a while for the crash to occur, but so far it seems fairly stable.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838 has a list of the files that are replaced during the update. Windows 7 keeps a backup of these older files so that it can revert back to this state when you first installed the update. The files I used to fix stalker are d3d10.dll; d3d10_1.dll and dxgi.dll.

Step 1 - Within windows explorer search the windows folder for each of those files; look for the oldest versions of these files (d3d10.dll - 14/07/2009 d3d10_1.dll - 14/07/2009 dxgi.dll - 21/11/2010)

Step 2 - Each of these files has both a 64bit version and a 32bit version. For Stalker Clear sky the 32bit version is what I used. When your windows search brings up the files (order by date might help you), take the files from the folders that start x86_microsoft (the ones that start amd64_microsoft are 64bit versions). I suggest copying these to a folder on your desktop.

Step 3 - Copy the files to the main game folder \S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky\ AND \S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky\bin.

Step 4 - Hopefully the game works now more reliably in DX10.1 mode (so far no crashes for myself)

I don't know why, but for some reason these files need to be copied to both folders to work. I learned this when trying to enable SMAA for Clear sky using mrHandi's SMAA tool.

The Bad news for mr Handi's SMAA tool It does not work unfortunately. I am not a programer, but I think this is because the injectSMAA dxgi.dll does not replace the entire dxgi.dll, just adds additional functionality allowing the SMAA; and so that dxgi.dll probably sends any requests that goes beyond it's programming to the currently installed dxgi.dll in the windows directory. If you do use the SMAA tool's dxgi.dll I don't think the game will start properly.

If you are using AMD, well you are saved by RadeonPro which can force SMAA without using custom dll's like InjectSMAA uses. For Nvidia you still have the option of using FXAA (Though you will lose some definition with the blurring - however you can reduce the LOD to -3 in Nvidia Inspector if you use that)

DX9 is barely unplayable in my PC (micro freeze, framerate drops for unknown reasons).
DX10 is fast and shiny, but I've got a black screen crash very quickly ingame.

I hope this tip will works. Thank you, anyway.

I was in the mood of playing Stalker Clear Sky again. I tried everything, reinstall the game, delete the mods i used, but the game froze like every 5 minutes. I saw in the windows application event entry that the game crash was caused by the d3d11.dll file. I was like "Um, OK?..." So it had something to do with DirectX.

I googled some and i found your suggestion.
MY GOD! YOUR FIX REALLY WORKED! :D
No crashes, no nothing, it runs like it should.

I thank you very much for your advise, thanks and thanks again! :)

An easier way is just to uninstall the windows update that breaks the game.

step 1: go to control panel

step 2: go to programs

step 3: go to view installed updates

step 4: right click the KB 2670838 update and uninstall

All this update does is make windows 7 ready for IE 10 and 11 so it can be safely uninstalled.

I saw that you said in your title without uninstalling the update. Why would you not want to uninstall this update? it's even labeled the evil update.

Did try both methods (3 dll files and uninstalling the windows patch). Nothing worked. Back to DX9.

Helped me. I used full max settings and "Complete" mod. No freezes after this fix

This post really helped me solve these damn freezes. Thanks man. Going to enjoy ma playthrough now.

Thanks for the solution. It helped.
I just added *core.dll files as well, just in case. Two days without any crash already :) DX10.1 enabled

------------------------------ DLLs loaded by xrEngine.exe --------------------------------------------------------------------
d3d10.dll Direct3D 10 Runtime Microsoft Corporation F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10.dll
d3d10_1.dll Direct3D 10.1 Runtime Microsoft Corporation F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10_1.dll
d3d10_1core.dll Direct3D 10.1 Runtime Microsoft Corporation F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10_1core.dll
d3d10core.dll Direct3D 10 Runtime Microsoft Corporation F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10core.dll
dxgi.dll DirectX Graphics Infrastructure Microsoft Corporation F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\dxgi.dll

14.07.2009 04:15 1 030 144 d3d10.dll
14.07.2009 04:15 190 464 d3d10core.dll
14.07.2009 04:15 161 792 d3d10_1.dll
21.11.2010 06:23 219 136 d3d10_1core.dll
21.11.2010 06:24 508 416 dxgi.dll

------------- MD5 ------------------------------------------------
2572E1F0254E2267E97DE1B15D099EC4 *F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10.dll
6E05F39AF5B91CEE0D2A84501EEEDBD8 *F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10_1.dll
9C36A3CA80F9B204C670336D344F5DF8 *F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10_1core.dll
547F78746F20901C770E8653B242217C *F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\d3d10core.dll
0411B7958C524BB2E91EE1B3035FE321 *F:\GAMES\SCS\bin\dxgi.dll

The OP's solution has worked for me too, so far.
Did exactly as was stated, on my 64 bit version of Windows 7.
And only the 32 bit versions of the files were needed.

I left the Windows update installed, as this is the only game it's given me problems with (that I've noticed).

Sadly, this does not work for me; I got the 2009/2010 versions, 32-bit, and copied them all to both directories as stated, but I *still* crash about 50% of the time when loading a save file.

Windows 7 64-bit
GTX 980 GPU
Intel Core i7-3820 (Sandybridge-E)

Additional info about this problem:

(1) On my system (Win7 x64, Intel C2Q Q6600, NVIDIA GTX 1060), random freezing occurs only if I play in DX10/10.1 mode with anti-aliasing enabled from the game's graphics menu. It does not occur if I disable anti-aliasing from the graphics menu.

(2) The freezing happens with 2x or 4x anti-aliasing, with or without alpha anti-aliasing also enabled. It seems to happen more frequently with more AA applied, based on my limited testing.

(3) The freezing does not occur with SMAA injectors like SweetFX.

(4) Both DX10 mode and DX10.1 mode exhibit the problem.

(5) By default, xrEngine.exe apparently loads 32-bit DirectX DLLs from %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\. The DirectX/Direct3D DLLs it loads on my system are:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3dx9_37.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10core.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dxgi.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d11.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3dx10_37.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10_1.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10_1core.dll
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\D3DCompiler_37.dll

If any of these files is also present in the game's 'bin' directory, the game loads that version instead.

(6) For me, the problem is so far fixed by placing version 6.1.7600.16385 (with last-modified date 14.07.2009 02:15) of each of the following files into the game's 'bin' directory:

d3d10.dll
d3d10_1.dll
dxgi.dll

NOTE: On my system, there also exists a version 6.1.7601.17514 (with last-modified date 20.11.2010 12:18) of dxgi.dll, but I still got freezing with that one.

To efficiently find all versions of e.g. dxgi.dll in your system directory, execute from a command prompt:

cd /d %SystemRoot% & dir /s dxgi.dll

UPDATE: Just got a freeze with v6.1.7600.16385 of the three files mentioned above. So using these old file versions does not fix the issue on my system.

UPDATE 2: Got another freeze, this time after also copying v6.1.7600.16385 of d3d10core.dll and d3d10_1core.dll into 'bin'.

Both of these latter freezes happened fairly long into a game session, whereas with a vanilla setup, the game would freeze within a few minutes of loading a save, so perhaps the DLL copy trick has made the freezing less frequent despite not totally curing it.

UPDATE 3: The freezing is not made less frequent by the DLL copy trick. I got a freeze a few seconds into a game session with the aforementioned downlevel versions of d3d10.dll, d3d10_1.dll, and dxgi.dll in my game's 'bin' directory.

UPDATE 4: I have now tested various combinations of the DLLs listed in note (5) of my post above in the game's 'bin' directory and, sooner or later, freezing happens with each of them when in-game MSAA is enabled in DX10/10.1 mode.

UPDATE 5: I tried uninstalling and reinstalling KB2670838 (+ Internet Explorer 11, which apparently has a dependency on the update) to compare the DLLs and versions thereof loaded by the game without and with the update. The differences were:

DLL --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Without Update | With Update

C:\Windows\syswow64\WININET.dll ------------------------------------ | 8.0.7601.17514 | 11.0.9600.17840
C:\Windows\syswow64\urlmon.dll --------------------------------------- | 8.0.7601.17514 | absent
C:\Windows\syswow64\api-ms-win-downlevel-user32-l1-1-0.dll ---- | absent ---------- | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\syswow64\api-ms-win-downlevel-shlwapi-l1-1-0.dll --- | absent ---------- | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\syswow64\api-ms-win-downlevel-version-l1-1-0.dll --- | absent ---------- | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\syswow64\api-ms-win-downlevel-normaliz-l1-1-0.dll -- | absent ---------- | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\syswow64\api-ms-win-downlevel-advapi32-l1-1-0.dll - | absent ---------- | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\syswow64\normaliz.DLL ----------------------------------- | absent ---------- | 6.1.7600.16385
C:\Windows\syswow64\iertutil.dll ---------------------------------------- | 8.0.7601.17514 | 11.0.9600.17840
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10.dll -------------------------------------- | 6.1.7600.16385 | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10core.dll --------------------------------- | 6.1.7600.16385 | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\dxgi.dll ----------------------------------------- | 6.1.7601.17514 | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d11.dll -------------------------------------- | 6.1.7601.17514 | 6.2.9200.16570
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10_1.dll ------------------------------------ | 6.1.7600.16385 | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\d3d10_1core.dll ------------------------------- | 6.1.7601.17514 | 6.2.9200.16492
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntmarta.dll ------------------------------------- | 6.1.7600.16385 | absent
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsCodecs.dll --------------------------- | 6.1.7601.24241 | absent

With KB2670838 installed, I get freezing even with the "Without Update" versions of dxgi.dll and d3d*.dll above in my game's 'bin' directory. I've verified that the 'bin' variants are loaded. (Having those files in 'bin' does, however, at least fix the missing volumetric smoke/steam in the Agroprom Underground area. In fact, the only files needed to fix that seem to be dxgi.dll, d3d10.dll, and d3d10_1.dll - both 6.1.7600.16385 and 6.1.7601.17514 do the job.)

UPDATE 6: Recently, a new prospective fix for this problem has been proposed:

[url=https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Clear_Sky#Crashes_on_directx_10]https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Clear_Sky#Crashes_on_directx_10[/url]

In my case, doing as instructed in that link -- removing xrengine.exe from the CS driver profile and adding it to the CoP one -- did not fix the problem. It did, however, make my game crash instead of freeze. I tested twice and each time I got a different error message:

stack trace:

0023:70AB4E83 d3d11.dll
0023:70AB74F0 d3d11.dll
0023:70A63E5A d3d11.dll
0023:0639663A xrRender_R3.dll

--- and ---

stack trace:

0023:73DBB342 d3d11.dll
0023:73DC1CD9 d3d11.dll
0023:7025B826 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:702E04E5 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:70267422 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:703E6E69 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:703FD2E5 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:6FD0F859 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:6FD0F77D nvwgf2um.dll
0023:702DFC95 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:706648B5 nvwgf2um.dll
0023:766A343D kernel32.dll
0023:77059812 ntdll.dll
0023:770597E5 ntdll.dll

[error][ 126] : The specified module could not be found.

Gotta say that this fixed my crashes entirely. The game has been running smoothly since I did this. Thank you.