Vista and DirectX 9

[Melbosa]

So I've been playing around at work, and trying to see why some games run and some don't.

Word of Warning!!!
Do NOT install DirectX 9 any version on your Vista install.

Microsoft has stated that DirectX 10 is DirectX 9 compatible (DirectX 9L I think they called it).  Well this is a half truth.  It seems it works like a wrapper system.  If the game manufacturer bundles the DirectX 9 DLL(s) with their game, then Vista will play them fine.  If they don't, this special DirectX 9L in Vista doesn't cut it, and your games crash asking for the DirectX 9 DLLs.

To make them work, all you need to do is find an XP machine with the latest DirectX installed (December 2006 I think is the latest as of this post), which are usually d3dx9_XX.dll (where XX is the version the game is looking for).  Vista at least is able to tell you which exact dll the game is looking for, so that is a bonus.  Once you find the DLLs, copy the one required into the same directory as your games .exe file and it should work (have gotten 3 games to work this way so far).

For some reason Windows Vista doesn't like you putting DLLs in the Windows Directory.  Haven't figured this out yet, but the above seems to work just fine.

I just find this funny that Microsoft has advertised that your DirectX 9 games will work without any issues, yet the average person isn't going to understand how to do this "fix" to get theirs to run under Vista.  Took me almost 4 weeks just to track this down and understand why you do what you do.