Crimson Skies has a fascination for Dx7 over Dx9. How to f..

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I have installed one each of two copies of MS' original (not the recent Xbox
item) Crimson Skies game on a pair of PC's. There were no unusual
occurrences while running the installs, and everything is fine with the copy
on an older, slower XP 1400 powered PC. But on the faster, newly built
machine I gave to my grandson, the game won't start.

Each attempt to start is met by an error message saying that it wants me to
install DirectX 7.0 (the OS already has Dx9 installed). Even if I allow it
to try to do what it wants to do, and click on the button to install Dx7, it
does the same thing -- in every situation, the next thing that happens is an
abort to the desktop.

MS' Knowledge Base Articles on the game include nothing on this error
routine.

Crimson Skies was distributed by Atari, but is now classed as a "Legacy",
for which the only support they offer are a handfull of FAQ's, of which once
again, none involve this problem.

I have filed one version of my question in another of the games forums here
at MS Community, and will do so in still another, I think. FYI. the computer
that I built for my grandson that Crimson Skies doesn't like, is running an
AMD XP 2400 on an Epox 8RDA+ motherboard. It has 512 MB's of PC 3200 RAM, a
Gainward FX 5500 video card, is using the built-in AC-97 sound processor, and
has the W98se OS installed.

I really would appreciate some specific-to-CS suggestions. Bear in mind
that I have owned and used desktop systems for 27 years, before there was an
IBM PC, but once it was on the scene, I have had them, and taught hundreds of
students to use them, ever since (maybe even "thousands" of students for all
I can be sure of any more). I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the
game, and the Dx9, and the sound drivers from Epox, and the video drivers
from Gainward as well as nVidia. I do that sort of thing without thinking
much about it, I've had so many PC's already, and worked out my own problems
with them in 90% of the cases when anything went "splat!"


Kiwi