Where to find DirectX 6.1a

[Panda]

Does anybody know where I can get a hold of DirectX 6.1a (except thru Win98se and games, cuz i dont have them)?

I tried installing DirectX 7.0a, but it messed up my machine. Was it cuz of my driver compatiblity problem or something else?

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PII 266 MHz
128 Mb Ram
Matrox Millennium II AGP
SB AWE64

[Jorden]

Go check at the good old MURC DirectX pages

Jorden.

[Panda]

I already checked they don't have the DirectX 6.1a version.

[Jorden]

Don't you have some old PC magazine that came with a CD? Usually, on the CD it'll be somewhere. These days it might be DX7.0 but if you look for one round about May til November, you should have DX6.1a on it.

Jorden.

[Panda]

Thanks for the tip. I'll go and check it out.

[enKoDed]

Hi Panda. You should be able to find Directx 6.1 here, ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/planetquake/aoe/downloads/dx61eng.exe Hope this helps.

[enKoDed]

...and the Direct Play 6.1a update for Directx 6.1 here, ftp://ftp.gamers.org/pub/3daction/00utils/dplay61a.exe Best of luck.

[enKoDed]

Third times the charm You will probably have to uninstall DX7 to be able to install DX 6.1. Here is a link to a site that has a DX uninstall utility, http://www.ebrink.com/dxun/Direct.htm I have not tried this, so I don't know how well it works. It is very important to FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS to the letter, including the part about booting into safe mode. A search for the words "DX7 uninstall" at www.deja.com brings up several posts that provide links to the site mentioned above. There are also posts about success with this utility. There are no guarantees that uninstalling DX7 with this utility will not damage the stability of your OS. If you are not prepared to do a complete reinstall of your operating system, then perhaps you should shy away from this procedure. On the other hand, if you are able to make a complete system backup before you try to revert back to DX 6.1, so you can recover from any problems if the need arises, then there should be no harm. Best of luck.

[enKoDed]

I promise to try and make this my last response to your original question. Here is a link to a site with an easier-to-use utility to remove DX7. http://www.planetdiablo.de/wummy/dxb/#english He doesn't yet have the english instructions posted, but the utility has an install routine, so I imagine that it should be easy to operate. Once again, use at your own risk, and scan all these programs for viruses before using. Hope this helps.

[enKoDed]

Ok, this is a test report, not a response Anyway, I decided to test this "uninstall DX7" thing out, as I had a good backup with which to restore my system if things went wrong. I had DX 7.0a installed on my Windows 98 SE system. I downloaded the DX 6.1 and DPlay 6.1a files referenced in my earlier posts. I downloaded the easier-to-use DX buster utility referenced in the above post. I ran the DX Buster utility, and let it delete all of the files that it chose (It is easy to use, btw). After I rebooted, I installed DX 6.1, then the Dplay update. I ran DXDiag from the C:\Program Files\directx\setup folder, and it told me that I was missing several DX files. These files were Dinput.dll, Dinput.vxd, Dsound.dll, Dsound.vxd, Gcdef.dll, Gchand.dll, Joy.cpl, Msanalog.vxd, and Vjoyd.vxd. Using Winzip, I extracted the contents of the dx61eng.exe file to a temp folder by dragging it with the right mouse button over the "temp" folder, then selecting "Extract to" from the options I was presented by Winzip. I selected all of the files reported missing by DXDiag, and copied them into the Windows\System folder. I then ran DXDiag again, and it didn't complain about missing files, but it said there may be something wrong with Direct Sound. I tested Direct Sound from within DXDiag, and it seemed to work ok. I then ran a game that required DX 6.1 or above, and it seemed to work fine, as well. If you decide to use the DX Buster utility, you may want to deselect the files DXDiag reported to me as missing, from the list of files to be deleted by DX Buster. This may prevent problems. In conclusion, this hack job of removing DX 7 seems to work fairly well, but I prefer to have things back the way they were before I attempted this, as I can then be sure that if I have any gaming issues, they are not due to hacking out DX7. Hope this helps.

[Jorden]

enKoDed, are you talking to yourself, or preparing for the Y2K bug before it happens to you only??

All that info's got to get out NOW !!

Jorden.

[enKoDed]

hehehe, Thanks for appreciating my little DX uninstall venture Jorden. Sometimes I think my brain is not Y2K compliant Especially after the holidays and all. Next time I try and help someone here, I will attempt to bring things to a reasonable conclusion first Happy New Year Jorden, as well as to all the MURC forum attendants.

[Panda]

Thanks enKoDed for your feedback.

I used the DirectX Buster to uninstall DirectX 7.0a. It works fine. Now I need to get DirectX 6.1a to install on my machine.

Do you or anybody know whether there is such a thing as dx61aeng.exe for DirectX 6.1a?
Or is it just using dx61eng.exe and the dplay61a.exe to get to DirectX 6.1a version.

[enKoDed]

Hi Panda. Glad to hear you successfully removed DX7 from your OS. From what I recall, the only way to get DX6.1a from downloads, is to install the dx61eng.exe file, then update it with the dplay61a.exe patch. If I am wrong on this, someone please correct me. There *may* be a full DX6.1a install on some game CD's or such, but I have not encountered this personally. On a side note, after I removed DX 7.0a from my system, then installed DX6.1 to 6.1a, I had to reinstall my sidewinder software to get my MS sidewinder precision pro stick working again. You may encounter a hiccup here and there, but it is probably better than the problems you were having with DX7. Hope this helps.

[wummy]

"I ran DXDiag from the C:\Program Files\directx\setup folder, and it told me that I was missing several DX files. These files were Dinput.dll, Dinput.vxd, Dsound.dll, Dsound.vxd, Gcdef.dll, Gchand.dll, Joy.cpl, Msanalog.vxd, and Vjoyd.vxd." posted by enKoDed.

I don't know why DirectX 6.1 doesn't install this drivers, but the easiest way to solve this prob is to install DirectX 5.x first and then install DirectX 6.x.
The solution provided by enKoDed works too but it is a little bit difficult to handle for normale users.

Wummy

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[This message has been edited by wummy (edited 04 January 2000).]