Cannot create directdraw object

[Smekes]

WIN98SE
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
512mb RAM
lots of HD space free
bsplayer 100.807
DirectX9.0b

I get this "cannot create directdraw object" error when trying to play a movie. I reinstalled directX, uninstalled directX, reinstalled directX (:D), runned "regsvr32 ddraw.dll", which gives me
"ddraw.dll was loaded, but the DllRegisterServer entry point was not found.
DllRegisterServer may not be exported, or a corrupt version of ddraw.dll may be in memory. Consider using PView to detect and remove it."
, runned "dxdllreg", which does some stuff but does not fix.
I did "dxdiag", and when I test DirectDraw I get this error when he tries to draw a bouncing white square in full screen:
"DirectDraw-testresultaten: Fout bij stap 17 (SetDisplayMode op 640x480x16): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (Algemene fout)"
which is Dutch for (I'll translate it myself)
"DirectDraw-testresults: Error at step 17 (SetDisplayMode at 640x480x16): HRESULT = 0x80004005 (General error)"

I reinstalled bsplayer a couple of times, and sometimes it works for a couple of days, but I always end up having the same problem.
I reinstalled it recently, so at the moment I don't have any problems, but I expect that the problem will turn up again sooner or later.

[Smekes]

Things I still can do when the problem reappears:
-twiddle with the video rendering controls
-yell REALLY, REALLY hard at the screen

(option 2 seems to have a good effect on windows in general)