Getting MTGO to work in VMWare

I'm no stranger to virtual machines. However this minor issue had me up in arms for a while.

Since moving over to Linux full time, I realized the one piece of software I really need is MTGO. (Magic the Gathering: Online). It sadly does not run in wine as it once did. So, I go to my universal backup plan Virtual machines!

So I install a fresh copy of WinXP Pro, disable a couple of services to speed up operation and proceed to install MTGO ('Classic' now that the beta is open). Everything goes fine until I start up, it crashes.

Eh? Some googling revealed others with the same issues, mostly mac users with fusion (I suppose the Linux crowd doesn't really play MTG) but no solutions. Diving into the error codes with other games, I figured out the issue. Actually two issues.

.Net 2.0 is required. It seems the version the MTGO installer installs for you is incorrect. So I downloaded .net 2.0's installer (which oddly claimed to be the SDK, whatever floats its boat) and ran it.

DirectX 9c is required: Another odd one, since I ran windows update as soon as I installed WinXP, and directX did get installed. So I downloaded it again and reinstalled it from Microsoft's website here.

Once both of those were in, mtgo loaded up flawlessly. No restart required.

TL;DR:

.net 2.0 from here.
DirectX From here.
Install both, will work.

I think I'll support Wizard's new client more now simply because the guys who have the contract now are idiots.

Also I should mention Unity mode does not work unless you start MTGO in Unity mode. MTGO will claim the number of monitors has changed (yeah right, like it supports multiple monitors) and force closes. Now if they could just release a native client for Linux....