Fresh install then a download of 1.74 patch crashes it all

[BenStiller34]

I installed Civ 4, when I clicked on mutliplayer it said I needed to download patch 1.74, which I then did, after it downloaded it proceeded to install itself. That is when the install crashed giving me an error I cannot remember.
I tried to rerun the program, I get the startup screen and press play and it gave me the error 'Civilization4.exe - System Error The program can't start because D3DX9.DLL is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem'
Problem is I cannot reinstall. I looked for uninstall program in the civ 4 directory and there isn't one. So (using windows 7) I went to the control panel to manually uninstall, but when I tried it gave me the error 'An error (-5004 : 0x80041f42) has occurred while running the setup. Please make sure you have finished any previous setup and closed other application. If the error still occurs, please contact your vendro: Firaxis Games (##IDS_PRODUCT_URL##).'
Well the funny thing with that is there is no help on 2K's web site except this site and this 'Please visit the http://www.2kgames.com/index.php?p=support of the 2K Games site. ' which sends me to no where.
If someone can please give me help with this or let me know how to get some tech support from Firaxis Games please email me at freeskeddy@yahoo.com

 

[Furiey]

Welcome to CFC!

Is this a downloaded or disc version?

The d3dx9 issue is a directx problem, have a look at this thread

With W7 it is usually advisable to patch outside the game, download the patch then right-click on it and choose run as administrator to install.

I'm not sure what state your installation is currently in, whether you just have the d3dx9 problem or if it is partially uninstalled and will need a complete uninstall then reinstall.