Tried to install Red Alert - Yuri's Revenge

[David.Goodenough at DGA.co.uk]

and it failed.  The installer said that comctl32.dll was too old, did I
want a new one, so I said no.  They it said that DirectX was a level 0
(well actually a long list of 00.00s), and asked if I wanted to install
what looked like version 4 (although the docs with the CD say that it will
install 8.0a).  When I said no to that the installer quit.

This was a Debian unstable system, which is using the latest Wine.deb.

So how is it detecting the age of comctl32, and how should I convince it
that the dll really is up to date, and do I need to install the front bits
of DirectX in order to use the support that Wine is now increasingly
providing, or should Wine be advertising its DirectX support differently.
This is the first time I have tried to install a DirectX program on the
machine, and I do not know quite how I should proceed.

Thanks in advance

David