Don't you just love the virus known as direct X?

System specs:
P200 mmx @ 225mhz
VX pro alton motherboard
64 megs, Viper 330, generic PCI sound, pci nic
IE5

Roommate started complaining that everytime he turned around he was getting a direct draw beta expire messages. Ok, no problem. Ran the latest direct x 6.1 core. No change. Ran direct x uninstall in safe mode. Ran dxdiag and showed no direct x loaded. Reinstalled direct x 6.1 core. Same error. Well damn. Uninstalled direct x again, as well as IE5, reinstalled 98 on top of itself, reinstalled IE5 then direct x. Still same error. Looks like it may be a registry corruption, but really do not feel like reinstalling 98 to a fresh directory. Have also disables all programs but explorer and systray before installing. Ran full virus scan. Clocked back to normal. Nothing. Any ideas?