I "by accident" installed directX9, and everything went to crap... I uninstalled directX completely with the uninstaller... re-installed directX 8.1... a reboot was done for Each action of device and directX... Everthing worked well Except my sound card is no longer accelerated by DirectX...? But... DirectX say's it's fine... Psssht... re-installed my sound card drivers.. Nope... tried a different version of the driver... Nope... shoot, I can play virtual pool, which is a weak game by the way, hit the ball for a break, and Hear the break after All the balls already stopped rolling... "?" No errors at All on the system... other than this directX sound delay... All IRQ's are clean and independant... HDD is free of error's... what is thee deal here... EveryThing was perfecto prior to this DirectX 9 Garbage...! Help here...!

I don't know how good the uninstallers are but if you install windows over itself it'll reinstall the directx version on the 98 cd. Then you can try another upgrade to 8.1.

Are you updating directx online or running the standalone installer? check the installer is called dx90b_redist.exe i think they had an earlier version which was a bit dodgy.

Full installer... I do Not allow Any updates online... Nor will I ever...! only DirectX full installer from my CD's... as to re-installing winBlows... I was hoping not to do this... my swap files is at the very top of my drive... and the O.S. options are right where I need them to be... No way to see this system... Even MicroShaft has tracer's...! Looks like I'm in the dumps with this one...!

Try un-installing and re-installing the sound card drivers.

I figured it out...! FIXED...! I am using Dxun13.exe to uninstall DirectX... safe mode run here everyone... I used a DirectX6.0 DXinfo to find out that the Dsound.dll file and the DDhelp.exe was Still Dx9... reboot to Safe Mode Command Prompt Only... changed to the windows/system directory.. and deleted the two culprits remaining of DirectX9... rebooted to install DirectX6, then rebooted to install DirectX8.1... ALL Fixed... and fast.... sound is once again accelerated... no clicks, no crackles, no pops, and no delay with sound...