David said:
I have Win XP Pro/SP3 on my pc.
I have installed a game that requires DirectX. The installation
program for the game installed the latest version of DirectX along
with the game. Everything seems to work fine.
I expected to see an entry in Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs for
DirectX. There is no entry for DirectX.
Am I misunderstanding something? What happened to DirectX?
David
There are a few things to learn about DirectX. You
can't "go backwards" in release numbers. If you needed
DirectX 8 and installed DirectX 9 for example, you
can't install DirectX 8 over top of DirectX 9. You'd
stay at 9.
You can install the same DirectX file over and over
again, without apparent side effects. At least, I've
done it and can't see a difference.
There are some other issues with DirectX, which is
the versioning information. Microsoft keeps offering
downloads with later dates, but claims they're all
"DirectX 9c". But there is one file in each download,
which is different, and appears to accumulate. And
some software appears to search for a specific version
of that file, not accepting one with a later number
on it. Check and see how many of these you've got for
example.
d3dx9_24.dll
d3dx9_25.dll
....
d3dx9_34.dll
And when you use DXDIAG.exe and look at your config, those
files don't seem to be mentioned in any way that I can
tell. A certain Lifecam software update, looks for
only d3dx9_35.dll for example.
If you happen to run Win2K, and want to try the latest
games, Microsoft has been careful to add some "WinXP only"
features into DirectX. This just seems to be carelessness,
done on purpose to get people to dump Win2K. Well done,
Microsoft. (In some cases, you can use a hex editor and
patch around it, that is, if someone figures out the
recipe. I've tried that for one game in Win2K, and got
it to run just fine. Which shows, if it wasn't for
embedded stupidity, there is no actual issue with the
game running. At one time, Win2K and WinXP were considered
to be very similar, so that it shouldn't have been much
work to support both.) There is a difference between
"not supporting" something, and willfully breaking it.
I don't play that many games, and I suspect some gamer
sites will have a lot more quirks for you. On the one
hand, since DirectX is usually bundled on the game
CD, chances are few people will see these issues. But
stuff like the Lifecam, means it may bite you when
you least expect it. For the Lifecam, the DirectX
thing seems to be related to placing animations
on top of your webcam feed (goofy special effects).
Most people would never suspect they'd have need
of something like that, to be able to chat with
grandma.
Paul