I just tried to install the downloaded executables for the final few games and have the same issue with each game. On the menu screen I get horrible frame rates (less than 10, would guess about 5) and when I start the game (which typically takes a few clicks) it will start to load the game (ie I will see the track and car on basically a frozen screen) followed quickly by a full crash. I have an old vid card but it does seem to meet the requirements (FX 5700, 128MB Directx 9 Shader 2.0) and the cpu and ram should all be sufficient (2.7ghz 1gb). I have all the apparent necessary stuff installed including the right version of directx9.0c, .NET 2.0, and XNA Game Studio Express, and I don't have issues running any commercial games I've played. I ran dxdiag and the tests all worked. Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?

Oh and it also seems to be trying to reinstall directx every time i install the game...

Hmmm.... I think in the racer game you can adjust some things to make it run on slower machines. (eg. Turn down the quality of things). Try messing around in there and see if it helps.

You should try to update your FX5700 drivers to the latest one as well as getting the latest dx9.0c build.

The lastest DirectX build is "august 2007". You can get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-8fee451bf952

Even if you have DirectX 9.0c, every month (or so) there's an update (mostly bug fix and improvement, but no new features) and even if you have auto windows updates enabled, it don't update directX so you still have to sometimes check for the latest directX build.
The fact that the game installer try to install directX every time is maybe because you don't have a so up to date directX build.

The latest nvidia drivers are the Forceware 162.18 for Windows XP and 162.22 for Vista only. You can find them on nvidia website.

If it still doesn't work, check if the XNA runtime redist are not corrupt (download and re-install XNA runtime).

As a general advise for everyone having trouble running a game or an XNA tutorial, always check if your drivers and directX are up to date. I know that most of you know about having those thing up to date, but some don't.