Video Card Issues

[YumZ]

I have two problems right now; the video card and sound card. I have a ATI Rage 128 Pro video card and a Creative Sound Blaster sound card.

I am having problems playing an online 2d game. I get an error saying this when I try to join a game:
http://img31.exs.cx/img31/6961/error0pc.jpg
A friend told me I had a corrupt directx file, so I did a search for the directx files with ddraw in them and deleted them. Then I restarted and installed directx again. The problem pursisted. I then went into dxdiag and I get these errors:
http://img14.exs.cx/img14/8900/error24tr.jpg
http://img14.exs.cx/img14/6052/sounderrorjpg3mf.jpg
Under the Display tab, nothing much shows up.
http://img213.exs.cx/img213/997/dxdiag1bs.jpg
I'm thinking that I don't have the best drivers, but when I downloaded them from ATI's website, they didn't work. I got various errors about not compatible with my display adapter and one of them even said that it couldn't install because it was a Rage Fury Maxx driver (why that would be with the Rage 128 Pro drivers, I have no idea...). In the Device Manager, the ATI Rage 128 Pro doesnt have a yellow ! and since the drivers from ATI's website don't work, I updated them going through the device manager.

So in conclusion of this section, I can't play my game because of a DDRAW.DLL error and dxdiag says my video card is messed up.

I also have a sound card issue; one day for no apparent reason I lost my sound. I have no idea what happened, so I reinstalled my drivers using the CD-ROM that came with the computer. That worked once but then it happened again. I reinstalled drivers but this time it didnt work. When trying to listen to music it says it is unable to find the drivers or hardware.

In both cases I think I may have fried the cards. Is there a way to find out for sure, or is it just a Windows ME and drivers issue? Thnx in advance.

[Baser-X]

Did you try a system restore? If not, you may want to consider going back to before you were having problems.... otherwise...

Completely remove DirectX 9.0c (you'll need a tool such as DirectX Eradicator (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secure-cleaning/DirectX-Eradicator.shtml)). Next completely delete both the video and sound card in the device manager. Reboot. Reinstall drivers for video and sound. Reinstall DirectX 9.0c.

Also, is that vid card DX9 compatible? Usually it won't matter in my experience, but if it is not compatible it may be the root cause of your problems. Running an older version of Direct X may help.

[YumZ]

I have system restored disabled because last time it ate up 1gb of hard drive space (I need all that I can spare). I'll try totally deleting directx right now. I am concerned about reinstalling the video card drivers because every time I have, I've gotten an error, but we will see. Thnx

[YumZ]

Didn't work. I removed directx and the video card then rebooted, and installed directx 8.1, but when it booted up it said ddsound was missing. So I started again but I still get the same DDRAW.DLL error. The video card drivers don't install:
http://img221.exs.cx/img221/2223/error1ct.jpg