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DirectX 10 ... Was this wise?


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I really should have asked around here before I attempted doing this, but ...

I've been looking at discussions over at Epic Games' forums for its Unreal Engine and saw a discussion about giving Windows XP64 DirectX 10 functionality. The link provided in the discussion was this:

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/easily-install-and-download-directx-10-for-windows-xp/

I read through the article and decided to give it a whirl, following the "Download DirectX 10 for Windows XP" link to Softpedia, which gave me DirectX 10 for Windows XP RC2 Pre Fix 3 by LWGame. (I didn't bother with that "DirectX changer" mentioned at the end of the article. Blegh.)

Has anyone ever looked into doing this for their XP or XP64 machines before, and is that LWGame patcher trustworthy? I'm not so certain it's going to work out: DXDiag 32-bit says that my machine is running DX10, but the 64-bit DXDiag says it's still got DX9.0c. And, what's a little worrisome to me is that the Add and Remove Programs list isn't propagating now ... The patcher has provided no Start Menu option with which to uninstall DX10 as Raymond.cc claims there is. Incidentally, the LWGame installer doesn't provide any options for installing DX for XP64 either. Maybe they were writing about the other patcher mentioned, the one by KM-Software, but they didn't provide a download link to that.

So I guess my questions are: Is this thing actually legit, or did I get taken in by malware? If it's legit but it won't work, what should I do to get rid of it? Load a previous restore point? Pop in the XP64 install disc and run sfc.exe /scannow?

EDIT/UPDATE: Okay, yeah, I think I really should have asked people in the know before I attempted this. Aside from Add/Remove Programs no longer propagating (and being forced to kill a rundll32.exe process each time I check because Add/Remove Programs won't close normally and instead gobbles up a lot of system resources in the background), I'm getting errors such as "The procedure entry point_except_handler4_common could not be located in the dynamic link library msvcrt.dll" when using programs like Media Player Classic Home Cinema (though it will still play videos and music). Winamp won't load at all.

At least I feel reasonably certain this is just the result of messing around with system files when I don't have a real clue what I'm doing, and not malware. The question is ... how best to undo my mistake? I've looked up how-tos that advise deleting the entire DirectX registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\DirectX\ then restarting and reinstalling DirectX 9.0c, as well as this explanation of the error I encountered with MPC-HC at A Blue Star ... but I have a feeling this goes beyond whatever DirectX files were replaced.

Would a system restore fix all of this?

Edited by TrevMUN
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That's a relief, at least. Though the way my OS is behaving now after trying to install this is very troubling ... The most recent System Restore point I've got is from a few days ago, barring the one automatically created when I tried to install this. Would that fix the problem, or will this require more in-depth action?

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System restore should work for reverting any patched files to their original versions. I don't know if it will clean up any of the new files though.

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OK, the System Restore seems to have taken care of the problem. Checked the registry, too. Any extraneous registry keys/files relating to DirectX 10 shouldn't cause a problem if nothing in the rest of the system actually points to them because of the restore, I imagine?

Alas, it would have been nice if there were an unofficial working DirectX 10 patch for XP64 ... Or, for that matter, DX11 or 12, heh.

Edited by TrevMUN
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Any extraneous registry keys/files relating to DirectX 10 shouldn't cause a problem if nothing in the rest of the system actually points to them because of the restore, I imagine?

System Restore restores the registry to a backup created at the same time with the restore point, so there mustn't be anything related to DirectX 10 left in your system's registry. The real issue is, perhaps, that DirectX 10 must be supported by your graphics card, if it is older than Windows Vista then this surely isn't the case.

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The graphics card is actually the newest part of the rig (aside from the hard drives). Since 2012 I've been using a N560GTX-Ti Hawk as the previous video card was damaged by a lightning strike (the bizarre thing about that: the old video card, a BFGTech GeForce 8800 GT, still works but when doing 3D graphics beyond a certain level, it will cause the computer to lock up).

So the video card should be able to handle DX10 stuff ... Its specs say that it can handle up to DX11, even, and it supports OpenGl up to version 4.1.

Edited by TrevMUN
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