
Among these games are all Command & Conquer games which use a 3D engine (from Renegade to Tiberian Twilight). However, their functionalities are not covered by DirectX 10 and up, so to run such games, you must have DirectX 9.0c manually installed.

Many older games, particularly those made in 3D engines, were built for these specific DirectX versions, all of which appear to be contained in 9.0c. Microsoft apparently never shipped DirectX versions earlier than 10 on their operating systems, and relied on software that used those early versions to install the latest revisions during that software’s installation process.

The DirectX End-User Runtimes installer contains all of the components installed by the Web Installer in a single package and is recommended for those users that do not have an Internet connection during installation.This guide will tell you how to manually install Microsoft’s DirectX 9.0c on your computer.For information on obtaining DirectX 11 for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 971644.Updating the DirectX Runtime is achieved by installing the latest Service Pack or obtaining a newer version of Windows. Note that the DirectX Runtime (Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound) is not part of this package as it is included as part of the Windows operating system, and therefore cannot be installed or uninstalled.The DirectX end-user installation includes the D3DX, HLSL Compiler, XInput, XAudio, and Managed DirectX 1.1 components.DirectX includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs.


Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. The Microsoft DirectX End-User Runtime provides updates to 9.0c and previous versions of DirectX, the core Windows technology that drives high-speed multimedia and games on the PC.
