I was trying to run a game. The game says it can't find Directx 7.0 or greater. I checked and my computer has Directx 12 installed.Last time I checked 12 was greater then 7.0 so why isn't the game running and can someone tell me how to fix it?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Surprise, backwards compatibility is not a guarantee. There have been a ton of breaks since DirectX7.

What game, so we can speculate a solution?

Dark Reign 2. I asked about solutions with my last PC, tried all the ones I got, and nothing worked but the message I get when launching the game is actually different now.

Hm. Dark Reigns 2? Ah. You'll probably looking for the DirectPlay toggle, I imagine that's what's missing.

Unfortunately neither turning direct play off, or turning it back on made a difference Thanks for trying

For some old games, the solution is running a virtual machine using the compatible OS and required software. For Dark Reign 2 I supposed that would mean something like Windows 98/2000? Or maybe XP with a check for compatibility mode.

Have you tried downloading and installing DirectX 9.0c? Microsoft stopped making it available for download a while back so you'd need to get it from a trusted secondary site. It should install all the previously used DirectX libraries as well, including 7.

The Microsoft link that "I feel so tired" linked earlier in this thread may work as well, I haven't tried that one personally though.

It sounds like this might get very complicated. And running it in compatibility mode gives me the same error message I got on my last laptop and none of the suggested fixes for that worked. The closest I got to fixing it was something which let the game's opening movie work but the screen goes all black when the main menu should come up

Have you considered throwing BoxedWine or trying the Windows Subsystem for Linux to run Wine?

I know that sounds baffling and backwards, but that's just how it be sometimes.

And I'm an idiot. One of the older fixes does work but it requires renaming the game's dbghelp.dll file and I somehow missed that file when going through the game's folders

Doesnt sound like idiot behavior, when you found the solution. Even better was to provide an example reminder of what could go wrong.

B/c DX7 is old and depreciated.

Most Windows 10 and 11 OS's run DX10-12 well, not old-versions - so it won't be easy to get DX1-9 games running without modding and tweaking.

You might need a DX1-9 emulator or wrapper of sorts - such as DGVoodoo2 or DXWnd...and then configure those to work on W10/W11 and with your specific game.