Direct X not working in guest-Windows XP

[Gaboya]

Alright, so today I decided I wanted to play The Sting!, aka Der Clou! 2, a game made in 2001, I think. Well, the installer works perfectly fine on any Windows OS, however, since it's a 32-bit game, it won't run on my 64-bit Windows 7 computer, which I'm currently typing this on. I tried using DOSBox, until I realized it only works with 16-bit installers (either that or it just won't work with my game). So I decided to go back to VBox after around a year of not using it, or whenever the big 3.0 release came out. So I got a clean install of Windows XP Professional SP3 as a guest OS, and installed Direct X 9.0c, even though The Sting uses Direct X 8.0. Well, I tried playing the game, but I got the error of "DirectX hardware initialization failed." I knew that I had already installed Direct3D support with Guest Additions, so I checked dxdiag and got this error.

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The file d3d9.dll is an old version, which could cause problems.
You should reinstall DirectX to get the latest version.

Now I know for a fact d3d9.dll isn't outdated, because I had already installed it using the Direct X web installer before running dxdiag. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? And also, dxdiag allows me to test DirectDraw, but beside the Direct3D Acceleration test, it says it's not available. What I'm most confused about though, is why the game can't run Direct X, if it only uses d3d8.dll which doesn't have any problems. Any help? Thanks in advance.

[Perryg]

Did you install the guest additions (in safe mode) and select the 3D acceleration drivers?

[Gaboya]

Did you install the guest additions (in safe mode) and select the 3D acceleration drivers?

Yeah, that was the first thing I did when I installed the guest OS. I'm hoping it's not a VBox error that D3D acceleration isn't working, because when the drivers for it were first released, they worked fine. Not sure why they aren't working for me now though.

[Perryg]

Well I also see that you said you installed DirectX too. This over writes the VirtualBox drivers.

[Gaboya]

Well I also see that you said you installed DirectX too. This over writes the VirtualBox drivers.

Oh gosh... so should I just reinstall the D3D acceleration from Guest Additions? Or have I already messed up the guest OS?

[Perryg]

Should be able to install the GAs again. But if it gives you issues I would uninstall the GAs reboot and install them again. Be sure to do so in safe mode.

[Gaboya]

I would uninstall the GAs reboot and install them again. Be sure to do so in safe mode.

I did that but no luck, still no D3D acceleration. I decided to system restore back to when I first installed the OS, and currently waiting for installation to finish so I can test it.

Edit: Just tried again, still saying that d3d9.dll is old, but now it's also saying d3d8.dll is old too. I was able to test Direct3D, and my results were fine except for Direct3D 7, in which I got this output:

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Direct3D 7 test results: Failure at step 40 (Creating flipping primary surface with one back buffer): HRESULT = 0x88760064 (error code)
Direct3D 8 test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D 9 test results: All tests were successful.

Now I really have no idea what's wrong, since only Direct X 7 isn't working. The game still says the same error.

[themercuryman]

I was trying to run "Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich" and ran into exactly the same issue. It is also a Direct X 7 game. Did you ever get a resolution?

[stefan.becker]

DirectX 7 is not supported, so there is no solution with VBOX.