Sails of Silver is a great glider sim, BUT !

It was written for Windows XP, and ran fine in all variants of that. I now run Win 7 64 bit on a computer with a fair amount of grunt, and whenever I try to run SofS I get an error message 'dx8vb.dll missing - re-install to repair'.

I have it installed in its own folder, outside of 'Program files(x86)', with all the file attributes set to read/write. This is the same procedure I used to get MSTS to run in Win7 64, and that works.

I'm guessing, but I suspect this .dll file refers to directX 8, and I have either 9 or 10 on this computer - I'm not sure which installer put the latest version on ! However, I do not have this file on my system and re-installing SofS doesn't change that.

Before I get emotional and either lift a copy of this file off an old laptop running XP, or go and find dx9 ( or 10 ) vb.dll in my system32 folder and stuff it into the SofS folder, renaming it, has anybody got any better suggestions to make ?

I have tried 'Run as administrator' and tried running the .exe file in compatibility mode, with the same result - this error message crops up and the sim doesn't run. I would really hate to bin this application.

Regards,

Chris Cosgrove