I have a Dell 8200 with XP and Philips DVD RW pre-installed.
I'm pretty sure that XP already has Direct X.
The Dell came with Power DVD player, which works fine.
I had installed InterActual DVD player (which came with some DVD movies), and it used to work (or at least it worked on the day I installed it). I just tested it today, and it didn't work. So I uninstalled it, thinking there might be some conflict with MJ8. No change to MJ8.
I also uninstalled ATI Multimedia Center... which came with my All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500. Still, MJ8 crashes when I try to play a DVD.
And, I continue to get the always-on-top "feature." When I select other program windows, they appear behind MJ8 when MJ8 is in a window or full-screen. I can view other windows by minimizing MJ8. It's only after I crash MJ8 trying to play a DVD, but not always.