Friend has problems with DirectX 9 and games!

I've no idea what is wrong with my friend's computer but he already installed directX 9 and it won't let him play any games. It will keep asking him to install directX 9 even though he already has it ! He tried Far Cry (one example) and he said his screen just turned all black and crashed back to desktop. And with other games (Guild Wars and Rome he was going to play) it would tell him to install DirectX 9.

anyone heard about this kind of problem or something similar ? I told him to check in dxdiag and it said he had DX9c installed already.

 

Was your friend able to play any games in the past? When?

 

Yeah he was able to play games, he just bought rome:total war, and guildwars.

Now he can't play any games ?? It's so weird I never heard of this problem before. I even got him to install the latest omega driver for his ATI Radeon 9550 and he had to system restore from an earlier point. Now I feel guilty cause I tried to help and it made things worst.

 

Start
run
dxdiag
go through the tabs at the top and see what each section says on the bottom, if there are problems it will tell you there, you can also test the Dx install there.

 

It says he doesn't have Direct3d or something like that.

More details: When I go to Display Properties, on his computer under ADapter it would say all this:

Adapter Type: BLANK

Adapter Information:

Chip Type: UNAVAILABLE
DAC Type: UNAVAILABLE
Memory Size: UNAVAILABLE
Adapter String: UNAVAILABLE
BIOS Information: UNAVAILABLE

It seems his Adapater (RAdeon 9550) was uninstalled, how would he reinstall it?

 

take the card out and put it back in, reboot the computer.
if it isn't auto detected on start up go to add/remove hardware and install it there, does he have the install Cd for it? he should also try looking for new drivers at the radeon website.

 

I had him try the 5.5 catalyst, and even the omega drivers.

While installing gave some sever error, and after reboot his log in screen was all messed up, like 3/4 of the screen was black and the computer rebooted by itself and had to revert back to its working settings.

 

is his graphic card showing up in display adapters?
If so, what info is there?