Explain this: Directx just doesn't work anymore

[silverpig]

It's odd. It just doesn't work. I try to load a directx game (BF1942, Halo) and it just quits on me as it's loading. Halo gives me the message that directx failed to load. I ran DXDIAG and everything checks out fine (the spinning 3D cubes work for DX7, 8, and 9).

OpenGL works great (130 fps in Q3 at 1600x1200x32 2X FSAA 8x Aniso), and CS works in OpenGL just fine too.

Here's the really odd part. CS also works in D3D. So far it's the only game that will run D3D just fine.

No other DX games work at all. It sucks.


XP 1900+
512 DDR
R9800 Pro AIW 3.8 Catalyst (tried with 3.7 as well).
DirectX 9.0b (also happened with DX 9.0a)
XP Pro SP1 + all relevant updates.

The exact same configuration ran everything just fine up until a week or so ago. I did a reformat, clean install of everything and now DX doesn't work properly.

Thanks in advance.

 

[silverpig]

Update: I can run 3dmark03 fine too. Argh, I wanna play some games.

 

[silverpig]

Update 2:

Okay, this is weirder. I have /Program Files/xerox and /Program Files/microsoft frontpage directories, yet I don't have frontpage, nor do I know what this xerox is. I can't delete either folder as it says they are in use. Furthermore, I can kill explorer.exe and then from a cmd prompt delete both folders, but once I start explorer up again, I get both folders back. Neither appears to have any files in it, but there are subdirectories.