You could be wrong about the Tunebite product as this changes codecs and other components for graphics and sound which is the main factor in DirectX that is what it is a group of codecs certified by microsoft. There are a few web notes regarding this product, like a lot of this kind of utility, its good when it works but a pain when its going wrong.
Uninstall it then update the DirectX , go to the microsoft site and download all the up to date windows codecs from here:-http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/codecs/codecs.aspx
check dxdiag then and see if all is working, then reinstall Tunebite. they have a forum for all the Tunebite problems
Not sure how I'm wrong, I said that Tunebite DOES utilize DirectX... I had actually already uninstalled it with no change before you posted. I tried your additional suggestions with no change as well.
New info: Not only do I have multiple hard drives with backups on them, I also have two identical laptops so I can easily do side by side comparisons. With my current, problematic drive installed in one system and my most recent backup from about 6 months ago installed in the second, I ran DXDIAG again and looked for the differences. It turns out that although the FILES tab on both systems indicates that everything is fine, the DISPLAY tab on the malfunctioning system has a warning in the NOTES section that is not present on the second system with the most recent backup. It states that the file "ATI2DVAG" is not digitally signed etc. etc. (my graphic driver of course). The thing is, this is the most recent graphic driver for this system and it has not changed for a very long time (a couple years). More importantly, the SAME graphic driver and files are installed on both the good (for lack of a better word) system and the bad one.
Since the VGA drivers are identical and everything is working fine on the backup drive/OS, it occurs to me that a recent XP update has likely caused DXDIAG to label my graphic driver as not being digitally signed and therefore it's deactivating DirectX needlessly. Since the backup drive has been sidelined for some months, it doesn't have all the most recent updates yet, which would explain why it would behave differently. This has me concerned because if this is what's happened, and I believe it is, then as soon as the mystery update gets installed, it's going to deactivate DirectX on the backup drive as well. There must be a way to override the flag that DX has thrown as a result of it thinking (perhaps correctly) that the graphic driver is not digitally signed. It clearly is irrelevant since everything is working perfectly on the backup drive. If any DirectX experts out there have some input I'd greatly appreciate it, this is really screwing things up for me and reverting to a backup drive is not only going to be a major pain, but it's going to be pointless if the same thing happens to it the moment it gets the update.
FYI, I had NOT recently installed any DirectX updates to the problematic system prior to this problem occuring. As I stated previously, I did install the most recent version of 9.0C AFTER the problem occurred as a means of trying to resolve it. The only thing that had transpired prior to this problem occuring was that I installed Tunbite 4.x, but uninstalling it was of no benefit.
