Well, this thread was actually for a friend. He ended up taking back the 2600 pro and got a 7600 gs.
Yes, we did try reinstalling DX...
But how do you uninstall graphics drivers? We looked through the list of add/remove programs and took out everything we saw, but that just felt very very ineffective. As far as I know, there isn't like a list of installed drivers..? How would one wipe out all installed graphics drivers?