One week ago I bought a new Inspiron 15-5547 with Windows 8.1 preinstalled. I tried downloading some online games and they simply will not work. My machine freezes as soon as I log in. I've been told by a GM from one of the games that the problem is that the game requires DirectX 9 for graphics and what is being downloaded is DirectX 11 which does not have some files that version 9 has. I have bounced back and forth between the game forums and Microsoft without success. I have tried downloading all kinds of DirectX End User Run Times from Microsoft and one of two things always happens. Either the installer says I have the newest version and I do not need DirectX 9 or the installer says that I do not have a version of Windows that can run DirectX 9. Apparently, that installer is old enough that it can't recognize Windows 8 as an actual version of Windows. The only other suggestion I've gotten is to install an older video driver from Dell and see if that will work.
Any suggestions?