UI Crash: DX9Renderer NATIVE WARNING (non-FAILURE) line 788 hr=0x8007007e

Upon startup of SageLauncher (SageTv.exe), the application dies on **some** systems. On a failing system, the startup screen is displayed for several seconds and then suddenly closes without warning. With debug_logging=true, the last item logged in sagetv_0.txt is: "[FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@1cbca2f] DX9Renderer NATIVE WARNING (non-FAILURE) line 788 hr=0x8007007e".
This msg is produced from SageTVDX97D.cpp, line 788
Native code binaries are generated by vs2015. The failure was observed on a system running Win7-x64.
Observations:
1. A different box running the exact same OS and the exact same v9 binaries shows no issues; sage runs fine. (Video cards are different between the 2 systems).
2. On the failing system, the problem no longer occurs after replacing SageTVDX97D.dll (v9) with SageTVDX97D.dll from v71.9.3.
3. On the failing system, the problem still occurs after replacing the .dll with one built under vs2005.
4. The sizes of SageTVDX97D.dll are significantly different between v7.1.9 (704,512 bytes) and v9 built by vs2015 is 339,456 bytes. v9 built from vs2005 is 135,168 bytes.
5. Using dumpbin to compare SageTVDX97D.dll v7 vs. v9 shows dramatically different sizes for .data, .rdata and .text segments.
6. Both v7 & v9 have the exact same 27 exported functions.
7. The imported functions are different between v7 & v9. Only v7 imports GDI32.dll. Only v9 imports d3dx9_43.dll (as built by both vs2005 and vs2015).
8. Since the failure occurs using the .dll built from both vs2005 and vs2015, it seems like the problem was present prior to the migration to vs2015.

Can someone take a look at this?

Start at SageTVDX97D.cpp line 788 and reproduce the startup crash with debug_logging=true on the affected Windows 7 system. Compare the failing v9 SageTVDX97D.dll with the v7.1.9 DLL, including their imported libraries and renderer behavior. Done means identifying and resolving the system-specific startup failure and confirming SageLauncher remains running on the affected setup.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.