I completely forgot where I read this earlier, but alas - now you know. DirectX 9 based games can give you a hard time on Windows Vista - but to solve some of these issues you can download the DirectX9 redist. Download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4B1F5D0C-5E44-4864-93CD-464EF59DA050&displaylang=en

 This is the February 2007 edition so should be the latest version at the time of this writing. Please note that the download is a hefty 44 MB - although some demos nowadays are now over a GB in size I thought I’d warn you in advance.

PS; The web based installer of DirectX 9 is NOT to be used on Windows Vista. Please check the supported systems before you try that and potentially mess it all up!

I’ll let you guys know how it went