Thanks Squally,
I'll have to see about the reinstalling windows.
About DiretX, though, I've reinstalled the latest version (8.1) about 6 or 7 times (and I'm not exaggerating) and I still get the problem.

The thing is, one error leads to another. When I tried to open DirectX Diagnostic Tools I get an error in Kernal32.dll, of which I've also gotten errors for under Rundll32. dll and a whole bunch of other ones. I can't even do a system restore because of that darn Kernal32, much annoyance.