So while attempting to finish far cry last night apparently somehow my directx 9.0c installation got somewhat borked. It was failing to find d3dx9_26.dll (apparently looking around the files d3dx9_24.dll, d3dx9_25.dll, d3dx9_27.dll,d3dx9_28.dll also seem to disappear randomly). Doing a quick google search I found somebody who had the dll available to download but being a little wary of installing random but hopefully helpful DLLs and also figuring that there might be more than one missng file, I went to the source, Microsoft. I dutifully went and downloaded the directx installer but since I have already installed directx that didn’t seem to help as the installer didn’t do much of anything. Fishing around some more I found the easiest way to correct this mess is to go to the microsoft web site and look for the DirectX End User Runtimes, the full version, as the web installer wasn’t all that helpful. At this time you can find this at :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/sdk/default.aspx
After installation your computer should be in a much happier DirectX place (at least until the next time the dlls mysteriously disappear) Hope this helps!
Update: The DirectX end user runtime can now be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/aa937788.aspx