Your problem is probobly not related to DirectX, your system can have many differant copies installed at once. Unless you are getting errors directly related to DirectX, the problem is from some change the game made to your registry. In that case, you could try uninstalling the game, or goto the site of the company that made the game and see if there is a patch to fix the problem. If that isnt it, e-mail me at Dustin6000@aol.com

-Dustin

Hi,

I hate to contradict another person's advice, but my experience with DirectX differs sharply from Dustin's experience, so I thought I would throw mine in. A lot of the .dll files in all the DirectX versions carry the same name, so when your husband agreed to allow the game in question to overwrite your DirectX 7, he took some of your version back to a previous version; these files are now trying to get along with what remained of your original version. You may have a mess at the moment. Go here, choose Product Updates. After this, choose Show Installed Updates. From the list that comes up, choose DirectX 7. You will download files, and they'll go ahead and install them for you. Now, if your computer is not working to the point that you can't get to Microsoft's website, you can extract the version which came with your OS from your install CD--the System File Checker tool can help with that. You would run it and have it check for missing or damaged files. Another place you can get DirectX 7 is from any of the computer gaming magazine demo CD's. Probably that is the easiest way to get it and install it.

Hopefully that will straighten things out for you. Since all versions of DirectX are backwards compatible, you never install a previous version over a newer one, particularly since from version 6.0 on, DirectX is now uninstallable. You can't just take it off anymore and reinstall a clean copy.

I'm sorry Dustin; Our experiences in this area are so different that I had to post the differences.

Good luck,
Kay

Hi Langfamily,

I just thought I might add a little more to the confusion here. It is my understanding that with Windows 98 and the more current versions of DirectX, you were prevented from installing the same or earlier version of DirectX "over" the same or later version. If you tried, you would get a DirectX setup error -14, and the installation would not proceed (see this article in the Dell Knowledge Base). You can also look here for a more complete list of error codes in DirectX installation. You might want to run dxdiag.exe if you really suspect a problem with DirectX. I hope this helps more than confuses!

Laissez les bon temps rouler,
Clotile

Hi Clotile,

I have not personally attempted to install a previous version of DX, but my understanding from people who previously posted is this: when DX7 first came out, it adversely affected certain Dell systems, only no one knew that until they installed it and it messed them up. They then were unable to uninstall DX7, because it was no longer installable after version 6.0, so they reinstalled 6.1 over 7.0. They did not report your error message as occurring, but did state that the result of the reinstall was unsatisfactory--most of them ended up reformatting to get rid of the damage. I am not certain if the System File Checker utility could have been used to fix it or not, saving them a reformat.

Windows and everything it spawns is such a wonderful adventure :),

Kay

Hi Kay,

As I said before, I think that after the introduction of DirectX 5.0, a mechanism was introduced to prevent the overwriting of DirectX by the same or earlier versions of the utility since this had been a problem before with DirectX. The second article I referred to in my previous post supports this position. If an attempt was made to try to install DirectX 6.1 over 7.0, I don't think the install would go unless the system was "fooled" into believing that the same or later version was not already installed. As far as using SFC to check files, dxdiag.exe looks for problems in files associated with DirectX. Also, an update for DirectX 7.0, DirectX 7.0a, is available here for those with 7.0. Again, I hope this helps.

Laissez les bon temps rouler,
Clotile

clotile,

Merci! Vous-etes francaise? the diag suggests to re-install directx. I do not know how to do it.

Lynnette

Hi Lynette,

First, could you tell me where in the DirectX diag process did it suggest you reinstall DirectX? Second, what version of DirectX (5.0, 6.1, 7.0) is it reporting you have, and are you sure your system came with 7.0? Finally, when it checked your DirectX files, did you notice any with yellow triangles and exclamation points to the left of them?

Laissez les bon temps rouler,
Clotile

System cannot locate directx7.0 when playing games....What happened to it....I also tried to install a better version of Directx 8.0a......cannot get this to work either...What has happed?