Unable to find dsound.h after installing Directx 9.0c on Windows XP

Question

I am trying to build portaudio using MS VC++ 2009. The first time I tried to do that, I got an error that dsound.h was not found. I then downloaded and installed DirectX 9.0c. Now I assumed that the installer would create an environment variable DX_SDK, through which I can point to the header file in MSVC. However, that did not happen and now I am not able to locate the folder where DirectX is installed. The installer does not provide an option for me to specify where I want to install. Please help.

Answer 1

Typically in such cases you need to configure the IDE to search additional include folders. In VS2005 that's done through Tools/Options/Projects and Solutions/VC++ Directories, then 'Include files' at the upper right combo. You'd want to manually navigate to the DX include path - for example, on my machine that's 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2008)\Include'.

HTH.