Help with unusual dll/registry problem

[lasttoknow]

A recent automated software install - possibly an update of Apple
quicktime or the free autodesk design review - has resulted in a
strange new buggy behavior affecting many applications on my windows
xp pro desktop.

The behavior is this: when I click on a toolbar menu heading to
create a popup frame with the menu choices available under that
heading, the popup itself doesn't initially paint itself correctly.
It is initially mostly blank. If I move my mouse over to other menu
choices they will paint correctly and if I move the mouse back to the
original choice it will then paint correctly as well. So this is a
minor but widespread annoyance. Most standard Microsoft applications
like IE, "calculator", "My computer", etc. are affected, as well as
many non-Microsoft applications. Other apps like Mozilla Firefox and
OpenOffice that apparently use different GUI libraries or techniques
are not affected at all.

I'd appreciate any suggestions for tracking down and fixing the cause
of this problem Dll spy doesn't reveal any obviously wrong dll's
being loaded in the problematic applications, so perhaps it is some
kind of versioning incompatibility.

[lasttoknow]

I managed to fix the problem without understanding it completely, so
I'll document what I did.

1) Step1 - Reasoned that the problem phenomena is probably related to
system libraries
2) Step 2 - Looked in the c:/Windows/system32 to see which files had
recently changed
3) Step 3 - found that files in the DirectX directory had recently
changed
4) Step 4 - went to Microsoft site and asked it to update me to the
latest version of DirectX
5) Step 5 - rebooted

That seems to have fixed the issue, though I don't really know the
what or why of it.

On Jun 10, 1:35