A new game installation might have overwritten or failed to include the legacy runtime components. Registry Corruption:
: Part of the DirectX 9.0c "D3DX" (DirectX Extension) library. d3x9-26.dll
This fixes Windows system files, not game DLLs. But if your system’s DirectX registration is corrupt: A new game installation might have overwritten or
Use a tool like (depends.com) or Process Monitor (from Sysinternals) to see exactly which file is failing to load. The chain might require d3dx9_26.dll → d3x9-26.dll → a missing Visual C++ runtime. d3x9-26.dll