Applications:
Winrar® - Open .RAR and .ZIP archive files.
Adobe® Acrobat® - Open .PDF files
Microsoft® DirectX® Download Links:
DirectX 9.0c Runtime Distribution
D3DXDLL.zip Installer for the DLL, created by Keith Ditchburn
Installation
Windows® Installer 3.29MB
Are you missing D3DX9_25.dll through D3DX9_27.dll and getting errors?
Sometime around February of 2005, the braintrust behind DX decreed that indie developers don't have enough problems on their hands and set out to ruin their lives. The end result of their evil plot is that D3DX is no longer distributed automatically with the rest of DirectX and also not offered as a download except through the runtime distribution. Obviously tacking on a multi-megabyte (MS states it's from 10kb to 166.666 Megabytes depending on what components are needed for the web install but the redistributable package that we would need to include is 34 Megabytes) installer to each game complicates the idea of having small downloadable games. We, along with a myriad of other developers, receive the brunt of this change with a huge increase in tech support.
Luckily for us, Microsoft decided to allow developers to create small install packages to update just the D3DX dll. OMGBBQWEARESOLUCKYLOL!! BUT WAIT, can't I just put the DLL's in each package so we don't have to deal with this palavar, you ask? Sadly, no, this is against the EULA. So small installers of the DLL's it is.
All joking aside, the real purpose of this is so that they can patch D3DX seperately from the rest of DirectX. This gives the ability to greatly enhance the speed at which DirectX advances, particularly in the programmable pipeline area. The only gripe is that these simple little files should be automatically updated through windows update. The zip included on this site as well as much of this information was taken with permission from Keith Ditchburn's website Toymaker.info. Thanks Keith!
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