DirectX problems/uninstall

[Karen Politte]

OK here goes again - our laptop yet again has a curl of smoke coming from the hard-drive:

Running Windows 2000 Professional...

We wanted to run "GRLevel3" on our laptop - and so downloaded the trial of it onto the laptop. It would not work - stating that we needed DirectX to run this program. Okay we thought - and went and installed the newest version of DirectX onto the laptop, also.

Well - now not only does the GRLevel3 program still NOT work, but also installing DirectX has had some kind of conflict with our video card and we NOW cannot run OKFIRST (which uses Weatherscope plugins) - the graphics do not show and just keep showing the generic graphic symbol in the upper-left corner. Everything else (WeatherTAP etc.) works fine.

We figured that we should just uninstall DirectX and get back to where we were at least being able to run OKFIRST - but it turns out that uninstalling DirectX is a major pain in the a$$ and, apparently, something that is not meant to be done (OR something Microsoft doesn't want you to do!). DirectX does not come with an uninstall option - and so I assume it is now imbedded within Windows on our laptop in some incredibly technical and equally unreachable place??

What now? Does anybody have any ideas as to how to uninstall DirectX?? Has anybody had any past experience with DirectX/Weatherscope plugins conflicts???

If so - I WANT to hear from you! You are the last chance to save this poor laptop's life from being flushed down the toilet.

KR

 

[Tim Johnson]

Does Win2000 have a restore feature like XP? If so, I would start there. GRLevel3 requires a vid card that is capable of 3d graphics, and I believe Direct X ver 9. If your laptop is aged a bit, chances are you wont be able to run GRLevel3.

(Seems to be moot at this point as you are trying to backup to where you were before.)

System restore, or a previously saved registry is probably your best bet.

 

[Larry J. Kosch]

Do a Yahoo or Goggle search for "Direct X Uninstall" and you will get a slew of web sites that has uninstall stuff that you can use. But be careful and read the fine print, etc. :shock:

I think Windows Professional has a system restore set up where you can roll back your system settings to before you installed Direct X. Check it out!! 8)

LJK.

 

[Tim Johnson]

I turned up a util to uninstall direct x here. Might be worth looking into if the restore feature is not an option on 2000

http://www.superfoxs.com/

There are a few other links that turn up with this search on yahoo.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=uninstall...RyucwABAA%40%40


The ask leo link say that it cannot be done. I am shrugging now

Anybody else know?

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

What video card?

Do you have the latest drivers?

Aaron

 

[Robert Dewey]

Yeah, your video card likely doesn't support DirectX 9, but I don't see why that would interfere with other images (unless Weatherscope calls on Directx for rendering). Obviously that must be the problem though, or else there wouldn't be a problem at all :wink:

 

[John Erwin]

Karen,

This sounds like a continuation of your other problem with the laptop. Did you manage to update your video drivers yet? I'm not quite buying the "Direct X not compatible with your old laptop" argument as I recently updated a fairly old laptop (running 2000 pro) with the latest Direct X and was able to run the Gibson Ridge demo fine on it.

I would first of all ensure that you have ALL the latest MS patches on your machine, then go to the Laptop manufacturer and get ALL the latest patches and updates available for your laptop. A bit of work yes, but it should clear up a lot of these nagging problems. If not, a restore might be a better option if some problems have crept into your OS installation.

Cheers!

 

[Karen Politte]

What video card?

Do you have the latest drivers?

Aaron

Laptop = Dell Latitude CPi (AKA PoS)

Video Card = Neomagic Magicgraph 128ZV/ZV1XD (AKA PoS)

Drivers = Registered here last night and managed to find some downloads for our type of Video Card. I downloaded them - but the problem is I don't know where to put them! I put them into the generic "DRIVERS" folder on our hard drive which the original video card drivers seemed to be located in. Nothing changed and we still cannot view OKFIRST (or the Gibson Ridge thing). Do I need to do something special with the drivers I downloaded?

We also went to Dell.com and checked out their latest support for this type of laptop. They state there are no new updates for this system - nothing.

KR

 

[Robert Dewey]

What video card?

Do you have the latest drivers?

Aaron

Laptop = Dell Latitude CPi (AKA PoS)

Video Card = Neomagic Magicgraph 128ZV/ZV1XD (AKA PoS)

Drivers = Registered here last night and managed to find some downloads for our type of Video Card. I downloaded them - but the problem is I don't know where to put them! I put them into the generic "DRIVERS" folder on our hard drive which the original video card drivers seemed to be located in. Nothing changed and we still cannot view OKFIRST (or the Gibson Ridge thing). Do I need to do something special with the drivers I downloaded?

We also went to Dell.com and checked out their latest support for this type of laptop. They state there are no new updates for this system - nothing.

KR

That's the same laptop I had. I can confirm that it doesn't like the later versions of the DirectX drivers, it can handle up to about DirectX 6.0 or so (don't quote me on that though). That laptop was a real piece of work...

The only thing that happened when I did put DirectX 9.0 on there, was the DirectX tests would fail (in dxdiag)... Other than that, it caused no other problems. I am thinking that WxScope calls on DirectX for rendering, and that could possibly explain the problem there...

Did you ever resolve the web graphics problem you had earlier? If not, I would venture to say that your graphics chip may be bad.

 

[Karen Politte]

Karen,

This sounds like a continuation of your other problem with the laptop. Did you manage to update your video drivers yet? I'm not quite buying the "Direct X not compatible with your old laptop" argument as I recently updated a fairly old laptop (running 2000 pro) with the latest Direct X and was able to run the Gibson Ridge demo fine on it.

I would first of all ensure that you have ALL the latest MS patches on your machine, then go to the Laptop manufacturer and get ALL the latest patches and updates available for your laptop. A bit of work yes, but it should clear up a lot of these nagging problems. If not, a restore might be a better option if some problems have crept into your OS installation.

Cheers!

You might be onto something there. We tried uninstalling DirectX (with DirectX-Buster!) last night, and even the Uninstall program required the insertion of the Windows 2000 operating CD or whatever it's called. Problem is - we don't have the CD!!! We got the laptop used from a relative and no CDs came with it.

I think we REALLY need that CD........I think our system may be missing some really basic drivers that our laptop needs to swipe off the Win2000 CD.

We called a friend last night and asked if he could find us a copy of Windows 2000 on CD. We might hear from him today.....stay tuned.

FWIW - doing a simple search online reveals MASSES of people having the same trouble as we are - mainly with DirectX being screwy, and with the Neomagic Video Card I mentioned above NOT being 3D compatible when it says it is. Neomagic apparently claimed that it WAS 3D compatible.....but when all these people's problems surfaced.....retracted that statement from their website!!! Doesn't fill me with a whole lot of hope......

I am sure this forum will breathe a collective sigh of relief when the Rhodens finally push the boat out and buy a new laptop. :?

KR

 

[Karen Politte]

That's the same laptop I had. I can confirm that it doesn't like the later versions of the DirectX drivers, it can handle up to about DirectX 6.0 or so (don't quote me on that though). That laptop was a real piece of work...

The only thing that happened when I did put DirectX 9.0 on there, was the DirectX tests would fail (in dxdiag)... Other than that, it caused no other problems. I am thinking that WxScope calls on DirectX for rendering, and that could possibly explain the problem there...

Did you ever resolve the web graphics problem you had earlier? If not, I would venture to say that your graphics chip may be bad.

"Real piece of work"......you say it so kindly. Coming from me, the language would be a bit blue right now.

So do you think that our laptop already had an older version of DirectX on it (which it used for WxScope etc.), and when we installed the newer versio - it sent everything screwy?? I guess us ripping out everything to do with DirectX we could find last night would also have been a bad thing to do......

No we never did solve the web compression problem - it's still happening. But the thing is - Gene says it only happens while looking at data via our Sprint Aircard.......so he seems to think that it's something to do with that card. I'm not convinced and think that it happens when using other methods of data-collection than the Sprint card - and I think it's something internally wrong with the laptop.

Thanks guys for all your help - keep it coming.....

KR

 

[John Diel]

I can tell you from past experience, the Neomagic line of video cards will not run GRLevel3. Period, end of story. I have a Neomagic 256AV. It does accept the DirectX 9 and higher, but since the cards does not accept the 3D acceleration that DX9 does, it's rather limited. I have heard that there were issues in putting the DX9 on the machines (computers) and that it took away some functionality of the card. Apparently, there was a 3D emulator programming layer that would allow certain levels of 3D programming to work. Installing DX9 took that functioning away. The only way I've heard of restoring that functionality was to restore the computer to it's factory Specs using the restore disks.

It's not much, and it's probably not what you wanted to hear, but that's what I have heard from various sources about this.

 

[Karen Politte]

I can tell you from past experience, the Neomagic line of video cards will not run GRLevel3. Period, end of story. I have a Neomagic 256AV. It does accept the DirectX 9 and higher, but since the cards does not accept the 3D acceleration that DX9 does, it's rather limited. I have heard that there were issues in putting the DX9 on the machines (computers) and that it took away some functionality of the card. Apparently, there was a 3D emulator programming layer that would allow certain levels of 3D programming to work. Installing DX9 took that functioning away. The only way I've heard of restoring that functionality was to restore the computer to it's factory Specs using the restore disks.

It's not much, and it's probably not what you wanted to hear, but that's what I have heard from various sources about this.

No! - stuff like this is EXACTLY what I want to hear!

Fact is - I don't give a monkey's about being able to run GibsonRidge stuff on our laptop anymore - all we want to be able to do is get rid of the new DirectX crap we installed, and return it to where it was yesterday, being able to at least run OKFIRST and one other program that relies on WxScope.

So that's where we want to get to. We just don't know how to get there, yet.....

KR

 

[John Diel]

As with most things Microsft, DX9 or above makes changes to the Operating System as well as video functionality. On the OS level, it's really hard to remove those changes (unless there is a set rollback feature or removal feature built in). The installed files and modified files are literally "all over the place". Removing or modifying one, will affect another, which affects yet another, a classic Dominoe effect.

Have you tried Micro$oft's Knowledge Base in their help section? You might try search it using the "Direct X caused reduced funtion" or some kind of string like that. They might even have a fix or work around.

 

[Karen Politte]

It's not looking too good, then......