With all the comments on the download page, particularly about DX9 I wanted to also post my comments here in case they were easier to find &/or any help at all.
#2:
".NET Framework 4.0
Rumors are that the mess will get cleaned up in a future version, but in all honesty, I’m skeptical."
Haven't had any real problems with bugs & such in .NET through v. 4.5 in Windows Vista or later, so don't think there's too much that's fixable, IMHO anyway. Rather I think most problems are due to the way .NET is designed to work, with the small remainder of problems caused by software using .NET that could be written better.
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#4:
"I was excited to see a HOG here until I got to the part about Net Framework 4.0. I have an older system that can not support this."
.NET 4 will work in XP & newer, though on systems designed for XP it can seem to take forever to install & consume 1 GB+ of disk space. If you do add it make sure you visit Microsoft Update immediately afterwards -- installation usually will not include the latest hotfixes, & many are for security problems.
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#12:
"I downloaded and installed the game, but got an error upon starting it.
“Unhandled exception has occurred in your application….Direct3DX 9 was not found…”So, I followed the instructions for loading up Direct3DX9. I still could not run the game. I also had to task manager the game window (black screen) off."
#19:
"I got a message that some DirectX-file wasn’t found. So after downloading and installing a DirectX-update I tried again. This time the game seem to be starting, but all I could do was fill in a new username. My mouse/pen (Wacom Intuos3-A5) wasn’t working and the game could not be started. I’m on a Windows 7-(32bits-)system. Any idea what can I do to get this game working?"
It could just be that your graphics hardware doesn't support the DX features the game needs. If that is the problem & you run into it quite often with games you want to run, a possible solution would be to add a VirtualBox VM [Virtual Machine] -- VirtualBox is free, & does provide 2 levels of DX support in software, 1 regular & 1 experimental. Though there is an unofficial portable launcher that may help, it's enough work to set up that I wouldn't suggest it unless you need it fairly often. That said, while the game will run in a win7 HP 64 SP1 VM using the normal DX setup [vs. the experimental], I had problems using the mouse. YMMV
There are 2 ways to add DX -- using a web installer which will download just what you need, & a complete install package. I've seen a lot of recommendations from companies like Roxio that if the web installer doesn't work, try downloading/running the complete version. Both are available from the download page or section at microsoft.com.
Not so much AFAIK with win7, it's also possible for DX to break, so that running the DX install won't finish or complete -- the web installer will not always tell you this... in case of problems check the DirectX.log & DXError.log in the Windows folder. If the DX 9 install won't/didn't work, try searching [Google] -- with problems in XP Pro I found many things to try, though unfortunately none worked, & Microsoft's recommendation was to re-install Windows. I can boot into XP Pro, win7, & win8 so I just never bothered with reinstalling XP Pro, where the problem was originally caused by a miss-behaving app install that insisted on running DX setup, even though it was fine & up to date.
If I'm not mistaken there was an update or fix for Wacom drivers.
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#23:
"Would not run, keeps looking for DirectX: 9.0, I have DirectX: 11.0. Will not load the game."
Some portions of different DX versions are different, rather than being like an app where the latest version includes or supersedes the last. DX 11 is cool, but also, don't forget that some graphics hardware will only support DX 9, & some will only support 9 & 10, so fewer games use DX 10, & fewer yet depend on DX 11.
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#32:
"Yes the microsoft site is very confusing. there’s 5 pages of downloads for direct X 9."
WR's suggestion to use Google is a Very good one when it comes to microsoft.com... using Google's advanced search you can limit your search to just a single site, e.g. microsoft.com. Otherwise you're right, using Microsoft's own search will bring up a lot of DX9 hits, & it only helps slightly to have it list newest 1st.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35
