Still thinking about it. A special thank-you to Lynnie, who, when I recently asked her for more information, sent me an epic.
As some of you know, I bought a laptop computer last year. It's a fine machine in every way but it does not run my Sims game particularly well. As part of the process of trying to improve it's performance I recently uninstalled and reinstalled the game. During the reinstall process one of the game's expansion packs sent me a notice indicating that it couldn't find any DirectX files. I searched the unit's hard drive and much to my astonishment, there are no DirectX files of any sort on the machine. No DirectX 9.0c, no DirectX 10 either, and I think the latter is supposed to come installed with Windows Vista. I can find DX9c easily enough on my main system but there seems to be no trace of DX in the same folders on my laptop. Yet oddly enough, the registry keys are present. It's very confusing. Given that this is a Vista system and not XP I'm wondering if I missed something. I downloaded a copy of DX9c but I'm reluctant to go ahead and install it for fear of overwriting something that may be present but I haven't been able to find, and a general worry about doing damage to the system in general. I'm not a tech person, so however you look at it I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, and frankly I'm not sure what to do. Yes, I did pass this info along to a couple of tech sites but I'm hoping for some answers here, too, if anyone has any. Help!