I installed an advanced copy of Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 a couple of months ago. I'm always leery of "beta" copies of anything, but I have a program on my computer called "GoBack"...so if I have problems then I can restore my computer to an earlier time (usually about a week). Well after I installed DirectX 9.0 beta my programs (mostly games and benchmarking programs) noticed a considerable improvement with no instability, so I decided to keep the beta version. Well, to my dismay Microsoft put a freakin "expiration" date on this beta version and it "expired" on me yesterday and now no program that uses DirectX works and I'm getting pop-up screens all over the place saying DirectDraw, DirectPlay, Direct3D, DirectSound, Etc. (all components of DirectX) saying that the component has expired and refusing to launch the program. Well Microsoft didn't include an unistall for DirectX and I can't go back to the original version of DirectX (8.1) because the 9.0 files are newer than the 8.1 files, so it won't write over them and too much time has passed to use GoBack. Anyone know of a program that will remove DirectX that is compatible with Windows XP? I've found 2 programs that remove DirectX 8.1 but none for 9.0 for Windows XP. Any ideas?

Next time when you use a microsoft beta product, make a full system image first, with Ghost or DriveImage. There is no way to get back the normal way. I'am afraid that you have to do a new install of XP.

Did you try system restore to a time before you installed the beta?

Robbie, It seems no one uses System Restore. (whiney voice) It uses toooo much hard drive space!!! Then they come here for help. Go figure!

Warning: Beta software can give users grief!

Yes I put directx 9 in and i noticed a big improvement but because of the expiration date i took it out straight away using System Restore and it put DX 8.1 back with no problems

Set date/time in Control Panel to earlier. That's it!