Woo hooooo! I got it working!!!!!!!!!!!! The problem was DirectX 9.0c apparrently. Earlier today I did try reinstalling DirectX 9 -- and as it tends to do -- it politely told me that DirectX 9 is already installed and closed itself. By accident, I was able to reinstall it just now. I tried downloading the Windows SDK to get access to Fuslogvw.exe which can be used to find dependencies. I was going to try to use that to find something that was perhaps missing that GameEx was looking for. In an act of sheer stubbornness I tried reinstalling DirectX 9 again -- knowing it wouldn't work. The installer asked if I wanted to install the Direct9 SDK component I said yes, tried GameEx, and BINGO! So, I now have a working but naked and empty GameEX. What's the best procedure to get my old stuff back? Uninstall GameEx, move the backup back to C:\GameEX (where it previously lived) and reinstall GameEx over that?